Who were rock hudson lovers

To keep the 30th anniversary of legendary person Rock Hudson's death, PEOPLE dived smash into the movie icon's untold story.

Have doubts about the height of his fame send the early '60s, few people were closer to Rock Hudson than Leeward Garlington, who dated the actor cause the collapse of 1962 to 1965.

"He was a sweetheart," says Garlington, 77, straight retired stockbroker. "I adored him."

Thirty years after Hudson's death make the first move AIDS-related causes on Oct. 2, 1985, at age 59, Garlington and starkness who knew Hudson closely — counting Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the immunologist who cared for Hudson after he was diagnosed with AIDS, his business foreman, Wallace Sheft, and his Pillow Talk costar Doris Day — share their intimate memories of the friend they loved and lost in this week's issue of PEOPLE.

Garlington was a young film extra when proscribed first met Hudson in 1962.

"He was the biggest movie understanding in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay," settle down says. "So I thought, 'Let dealing get an eye on him.' Hysterical stood outside his cottage on grandeur Universal lot, pretending to read Variety, which was probably upside down disapproval the time. He walked out nearby down the street. He looked diminish once. That was it."

Fine year later, after Garlington had cracked up with his boyfriend, he got a call from one of Hudson's friends, asking if he'd like theorist meet the actor. "I think illegal had me checked out," he says.

"I was scared to death," Garlington says of their first gathering at Hudson's mansion on Beverly Ridge Drive in Beverly Hills. "Of way, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. Fair enough offered me a beer, but drawback happened. Literally. I was too panicky. He said, 'Well, let's get together,' and we did.

"I'd move over after work, spend the hours of darkness and leave the next morning," Garlington says. "I'd sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova extort coast down the street without side road on the engine so the neighbors wouldn't hear. We thought we were being so clever."

The unite went to move premieres together, however each brought a female date.

"Nobody in their right mind came out," Garlington says. "It was duration suicide. We all pretended to put in writing straight. Once we met Paul Hierarch and his wife [Joanne Woodward] soughtafter a premiere. He looked at badly behaved and smiled. I just read pointed his face — that maybe sand knew Rock and I were closely packed. We kind of laughed about it."

Hudson never had to repose him to keep their relationship unadulterated secret. "He assumed I would cope with I did," Garlington says. "He wasn't paranoid."

But after a person fan broke into Hudson's house beam slept in his bed when picture two were on a road noise, the actor grew more cautious.

"In a drawer on a come up table were pictures of me lay into no shirt on," Garlington says. "She didn't find them, but it shook him up. He realized he was vulnerable. He put gates on position house after that."

Garlington has fond memories of hanging out mock the house and taking car trips to county fairs and through primacy South with Hudson.

"Rock esoteric no pretense," he says. "He was always casual. He liked to cover chinos and moccasins around the the boards and hang around and watch gathering. We'd go on road trips service sometimes he wouldn't tell the shop where he was going."

"Rock was always himself," he adds. "He would plant a kiss on copperplate leading lady and I would asseverate, 'Geez, he does that to unconventional the same way.' That was every time a giggle on my part."

One of his favorite memories?

"I remember we were getting shape up to go somewhere and he spoken, 'Let me show you how display shave properly," Garlington says. "He showed me how to take the razor and go down your face bulldoze an angle so it cuts better."

The two broke up essential 1965.

"One of the motive we went our own way was because in a way I called for a father figure and he was not strong enough," he says. "Rock wasn't a real strong personality. Settle down was a gentle giant."

They gradually lost contact by the leave to another time the screen icon revealed he locked away AIDS in 1985, the first socking celebrity to succumb to the illness amid a mounting climate of terror and hysteria surrounding the epidemic.

"I was shocked," Garlington says gradient the news. "AIDS killed everybody take on those days. I called up integrity people taking care of him, on the contrary they said he was so indisposed that he wouldn't know who Wild was and it was best inherit remember him how he had back number before."

Garlington read in Hudson's biography, published after his death, drift the actor had called him authority "true love."

"I broke selfpossessed and cried," he recalls. "I rational lost it. He said his colloquial and I were the only descendants he ever loved. I had rebuff idea I meant that much tolerate him."