Now the story of Henry Willson is being told in a new play by Tim Fountain entitled ‘Rock’ and starring the wonderful Bette Bourne. The play opens in Liverpool in May (13^th to 17^th) before touring to Manchester (May 20-24) and to the Oval House in London from May 27^th to June 21^st (www.ovalhouse.com)

The Hollywood talent agent, who was himself gay, helped popularise the beefcake craze of the 1950s that included Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue and more stars with strange names.  He turned truck driver Roy Fitzgerald into Rock Hudson but in 1955 when Confidential magazine threatened to publish an article about Hudson’s secret gay life Willson, desperate to protect his number one asset, fed them similar stories about Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun in exchange for keeping quiet about Hudson. He then arranged for Rock to marry his secretary Phyllis Gates to keep the secret quiet, one that was only finally exposed when Hudson was dying from AIDS.

Ironically Willson’s own sexuality became public knowledge and he found that clients distanced themselves from him in case they were suspected of also being gay. Willson died penniless from cirrhosis of the liver in  and was buried in an unmarked grave in North Hollywood in 1978