2/26/23
Newsletter #259
The Crack of Dawn
Being friends with Rick Sandford, who was not only the craziest film nut I ever met, but was militantly gay, I got to attend many gay Hollywood parties and events with him over the years. While doing so, I always felt as though I was “passing,” like Gregory Peck pretending to be a Jew in Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947).
If I showed up anywhere with Rick it was automatically assumed that I was gay because Rick would never hang around with a straight guy, and I was immediately accepted into the group. Having had this unique outsider’s perspective of the celebrity Hollywood gay community in the late-1970s, and all of the 1980s, this is how I saw it:
To be invited to the salon at Christopher Isherwood and Don Bacardy’s house — Rick’s good friends — you had to be of world-caliber intelligence, probably at or near the top of your field, quite possibly provocative or controversial, and more than likely gay. To be invited to Rock Hudson’s house you had to be young, male, gay, in shape, and handsome – brains had nothing to do with it. Rock Hudson didn’t go to Chris’s house (although I’m sure they would have loved to have him, and would have been very solicitous to him); and Chris or Don never went to any parties at Rock’s house.
The twain did not meet, except . . .
Except with Rick Sandford, who managed to straddle both worlds, a couple of times, and for only a short period in his life. I feel absolutely certain that nobody else ever did this. Sadly for Rick, he was quickly too old for Rock’s (the cut-off age was about twenty-seven, and that was Rick’s age when I first met him). Still, Rick did do both, and that’s something.
Rick told me a story about being at a pool party at Rock’s house. There were about twenty boys there, all between the ages of eighteen (maybe) and twenty-eight, all in perfect physical shape, and all running around in tight Speedos. Rick said these boys were, for the most part, the snottiest, swishiest, most holier-than-thou group of gay boys he’d ever encountered, even in Hollywood. They were all loud and obnoxious, but what really annoyed and embarrassed Rick was that they were consistently disrespectful to Rock.
As per Rick, Rock generally sat at a poolside table in his bathing suit, always in a good mood, always smiling, and rarely spoke. Which lucky boys were seated at the table with Rock was a constant game of musical chairs because they all wanted to sit with him. But the movie buff boys, the ones who had actually seen Rock’s films, sat with him the most. And they never stopped ridiculing him, and Rock just took it with a smile.
On one of Rick’s couple of visit’s to Rock’s house, two snotty boys had just seen one of Rock’s silly, extremely popular, movies with Doris Day called Send Me No Flowers (1964), which is a funny movie. The two boys were repeating lines from the film with complete disdain, blatantly ridiculing their host. Wearing his calm, charming smile, Rock patiently listened to the boys mock him as the other boys laughed. When they were done, Rock said, “You didn’t get the dialogue right,” then happily repeated the whole scene properly, doing a terrific Doris Day impersonation. When he finished doing the scene, he sat back with a deeply satisfied grin.
Rock’s performance was simply one more amusement for the boys at the party, but for Rick it was profound. He said that seeing Rock patiently repeating the lines as they were written, said to Rick, “Mock me if you’d like, but I actually made those movies, and I’m proud of them.” Rick added, which is admittedly a lot to construe from a single self-satisfied smile, that Rock was thinking, “I came to Hollywood and became the biggest star in town; you came to Hollywood and your biggest accomplishment was meeting me.”
In any case, Rick had nothing but kind words to say about Rock Hudson. He said that he was perpetually upbeat, always smiling, and was a wonderfully congenial host.
Sadly for Rick, he never really got to sit down with Rock and discuss his movies. I have no doubt that Rock Hudson would have loved to talk to Rick about his whole career on a factual, intellectual level, but it never happened. Rick’s 28th birthday arrived and he aged out of Rock’s retinue.
If you woke up and are reading this, the day has already been a success.