Rock Hudson, the closeted Hollywood heartthrob, was not born a movie star so much as he was carefully molded into one by his Svengali of an agent, Henry Willson. In “Outlaws,” the third episode of Ryan Murphy’s most recent Netflix series, Hollywood, audiences are drawn into this star-making saga. Jake Picking plays an early-career Hudson—having recently arrived in Hollywood as a clumsy Illinois native named Roy Scherer. Then Jim Parsons pops onscreen as Willson, the profane and predatory agent who transformed Hudson into one of the most bankable romantic leads Hollywood had seen.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Ryan Murphy explained what made the agent so ripe for the TV treatment. “Henry Willson was a fantastic, crazy character,” he said. “He was a complete alcoholic. He drank crème de menthe. He was involved in the mafia. He had dirt on everybody that he would weaponize. And he would find these young guys who almost all came from horrible home situations—with broken marriages and absent fathers—and take them on as clients…He was a tormented gay man who preyed on tormented gay men. He would be their manager and make them sexually service him. Weirdly, he was actually an okay manager. He was friends with everyone, so could get clients in the room with [power brokers].”
The 6’4” Hudson perfectly fit Willson’s template: He was handsome, naive, and had been abandoned by his father as a child, with his mother going on to remarry a man Hudson hated. Seeing the potential in Hudson—Willson was famous for saying, “The acting can be added later”—Willson swiftly took him on as a client, reportedly bedded him, and rechristened him with his marquee-ready name.
“He felt that he knew what America wanted to see in a certain type of male star,” Jim Parsons told Vanity Fair, “and he made it his mission to make sure they all fit the general mold, including the names he came up with, like Guy, Rock, and Tab”—i.e., Willson clients including Guy Madison, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Robert Wagner, Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun, and Yale Summers. “There was something very marketable about it…He saw them as commodities, and things to be shaped and molded from his own personal factory.”
If Willson’s clients were commodities, Hudson was his most precious export. Willson—an East Coast transplant from a well-off family—invested in an exhaustive makeover process, personally paying to cap Hudson’s teeth, give Hudson housing, buy him a new wardrobe, and send him to acting and vocal lessons. He taught Hudson how to mask the superficial flaws that couldn’t be changed—how to smile in order to expose less of his gums, for example. According to Willson biographer Robert Hofler, the agent also coached Hudson into dropping his effeminate mannerisms—slapping his client’s wrists every time they went limp, smacking his hips every time they swayed, training him to sit and smoke in a more masculine fashion, and instructing him to speak in a lower voice.
“The original queer eye for the straight guy, Henry Willson gave heterosexual men the necessary grace and social polish to shine in Hollywood’s better executive suites, nightclubs, and Bel Air homes,” Hofler wrote in his 2005 book, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson. “He was equally effective at teaching gay men how to butch it up and pass for lovers of women on the big screen.”
Hudson’s career did not take off instantly. The actor landed a bit part in the 1948 war film Fighter Squadron that required Hudson to deliver two lines—the first being: “You’ve got to buy a bigger blackboard.” Hudson flubbed the line so badly that it took him a reported 38 takes before he got it right, a scene reimagined in Hollywood. As if that were not embarrassment enough, Willson concocted a shameless publicity stunt later that year on the occasion of the Press Photographers Ball—the actor’s first meeting with press. Willson fashioned Hudson into a life-size Academy Award for the event, instructing his client to wear gold trunks and helping Hudson paint his body to match. Willson recruited a similarly press-hungry actress, Vera-Ellen, to go as Hudson’s date, donning a gold bikini and body paint. The stunt garnered press in the Los Angeles Examiner the next day, as Hofler wrote:
Hudson did indeed gain career momentum, and was upgraded to leading man for 1952’s Scarlet Angel. He became a star after 1954’s preposterous-sounding romantic drama Magnificent Obsession, in which he played a playboy turned brain surgeon who saves the life (and vision!) of his love interest, played by Jane Wyman. By 1957, Hudson received an Oscar nomination for Giant—the Western drama costarring Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. By 1960, Hudson was considered a rom-com star thanks to the previous year’s Pillow Talk, costarring Doris Day.
When Willson wasn’t steering Hudson’s career, the agent was working to nullify speculation about Hudson’s sexuality. Hudson’s newfound fame made him a tabloid target, and even publications like Life stirred the proverbial pot. “Fans are urging 29-year-old Hudson to get married—or explain why not,” the magazine wrote of its 1955 cover star. The same year, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé on Hudson’s homosexuality. Willson went so far as to sell out two other clients—telling the reporter about Rory Calhoun’s years in prison and Tab Hunter’s arrest for disorderly conduct in 1950—in exchange for the writer killing the Hudson story. The same year, to further quash rumors, Willson arranged for Hudson to marry his secretary, Phyllis Gates—choreographing everything from the bride’s bouquet to interviews with Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. (Gates filed for divorce after three years.)
But by 1966, the power balance between Willson and Hudson had flipped. Willson, losing his battle with alcohol, was bungling business dealings for Hudson. “He eventually got a bad reputation and lost what lure of power he had to keep clients around,” Parsons said. “His last years, in the business at least, were spent getting favors. Like somebody giving him a producer credit so he could have a little bit of income. Then he became too ill from the years of drinking.” Added Murphy, “Rock Hudson had been his best client—his bread and butter. But finally, at the very end, Rock Hudson escaped and went off on his own.”
In 1966, Hudson fired the agent who discovered him by phone. Per Hofler, Willson retaliated by telling Hudson, “All you have going for you is your face. You don’t have the talent! I have a jar of acid and I’m going to throw it in your face.”
Parsons has a theory about Willson’s cruelty. “I think it stemmed from his own self-image, self-worth, and lack thereof,” he said. “He was gay at a time when that was unacceptable, and to succeed in this business, that must remain hidden. I think Henry knew that he wasn’t a looker—so he made it his thing to say, ‘I can’t own you because you are so attracted to me. What I can do is own you because I’m smarter than you, wittier than you, and I have more power than you.’”
Willson’s end was a tragic one. Willson was arrested for a DUI; he lost his house to the bank. “He had no friends,” said Murphy. “He had a maid, and every time that the maid would come to clean his apartment, he would give her a piece of furniture because he had no money. So by the end of his life, he was living alone in an unfurnished house. And he was a true cautionary tale about somebody whose horrible deeds caught up to him.”
In spite of the way Willson had abused him over the years, Hudson reportedly made one last goodwill gesture toward his former agent during his final years. Said Parsons, “They hadn’t spoken for years, and had a very cantankerous relationship after they split up—Henry talked badly about him and vice versa. But even so, he always acknowledged somewhere in his heart and mind that Henry was a major part of why he became the success he was. And when Henry was in failing health, apparently Rock sent him $20,000—a larger sum than that sounds like today—and told his friend, ‘That’s it. I don’t owe Henry anything anymore.’”
“Henry Willson ended up dying of cirrhosis in absolute poverty,” said Murphy. The irony of his final resting place, explained Parsons, was stark: “This man who invented all these names for people died, and he didn’t have enough money to have his own headstone. So he was a nameless plot—until somebody eventually paid for him to have a headstone made.”
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