Rock Hudson made sexual advances to James Dean while working on a film together, the actor’s biographer says in a new HBO documentary

• Rock Hudson made advances to James Dean when they worked together on the film “Giants” in 1956.

• This is the statement of the late star’s biographer, who appears in a new HBO documentary.

• He said Dean was “contemptuous” of Hudson’s “straight facade.”

The late gay Hollywood star Rock Hudson – who famously kept his sexuality a secret at the height of his fame – made sexual advances to James Dean while they were working on a film together, according to the actor’s biographer.

In the new HBO documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” Hudson’s biographer Mark Griffin said that Hudson had “private flirtations with Dean” during the filming of the 1956 western drama “Giants.”

In “Giant,” released after Dean’s death in 1955, Hudson played a wealthy Texas rancher who becomes rivaled by a dour rancher-turned-oil magnate played by Dean. The sweeping epic takes place over several years and shows how their competitiveness eventually permeates every aspect of their lives.

Of the two actors’ time together, Griffin said: “By some accounts, James Dean was quite contemptuous of Hudson.”

“Dean thought it was hypocritical that Rock maintained this heterosexual facade in public while flirting with Dean in private,” Griffin said. “Some would consider it a case of ‘he who calls the shots’.”

“In terms of closeted sexuality, they weren’t all that different,” Griffin added, claiming that Dean himself had a relationship with a gay radio executive who was friends with Hudson’s agent, Henry Willson.

Willson, who also discovered artists such as Lana Turner, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue and countless other Golden Age stars, helped make Hudson a major idol and even gave him his stage name.

The documentary alleges that Willson arranged Hudson’s marriage to his secretary, Phyllis Gates, when the press learned of rumors about Hudson’s sexuality.

The relationship between the two men was dramatized in Ryan Murphy’s 2020 Netflix series “Hollywood,” with Jake Picking playing an early-career Hudson and Jim Parsons playing the Svengali-like agent.

As for Hudson and Dean, it turns out Hudson, at least publicly, wasn’t particularly keen on Dean either. In an archival interview heard in the documentary and conducted after the release of “Giant,” Hudson said he “personally doesn’t like him very much.”

Hudson claimed that director George Stevens only hired Dean because he was “new and hip” after the release of East of Eden and For They Know Not What They Do, for which he received an Oscar nomination for the first film.

“Like I said, I didn’t like the guy very much. I don’t know if I should say anything more. Jimmy was dead before the movie was over,” Hudson said. “I don’t like to talk against anyone, and I don’t like to talk against the dead, so I think I should keep my mouth shut.”

Although Hudson and Dean did not particularly like each other, the actor met Elizabeth Taylor while working on “Giant,” and they developed a lifelong friendship.

According to Griffin, the animosity between Hudson and Dean “stood in sharp contrast to his love and appreciation” for Taylor, who played his lover in the film.

After Hudson died of AIDS in 1985 at the age of 59, Taylor became involved in HIV/AIDS education and co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

“Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” is available to stream on Max.

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