Phyllis Gates tells that a week before Rock Hudson proposed to her, he and his agent Henry Wilson had gone to Hollywood lawyer Jerry Giesler to find a way to stop Confidential magazine publishing the story of a gang bang at Wilson's house. She was informed of this by Giesler when finalising her divorce from Hudson, after tiring of his single minded focus on his career which included abandoning her when she was ill, his relationship with Wilson, Hudson slapping her when she referred to a friend of his as a "fruitcake", and his refusal to consult her psychiatrist. It was only after her separation that she became aware of the reality of Hudson's secret lifestyle, although hindsight provided clues - Hudson's friendship with several handsome actors and his association with Wilson, himself gay and an agent who specialised in handsome young and often gay men. Hudson's closet sexual behaviour being unknown to Gates means that it occupies little space - rather it is used as the denouement - and we are left with the less interesting stories of Hudson's idiosyncracies, once he stops having her accompany him to the filming locations. It's hard to assess the book in terms of it as a piece of writing because of the essential frustration of the setup, but the best part is Gates' coverage of the period leading up to her 3 year marriage, particularly relating to the set of Giant, because it is relatively optimistic. It also demonstrates the opportunities of chance, where the day she moved in with Rock was the day James Dean was killed, and how she was at Elizabeth Taylor's the night Montgomery Clift crashed his car. Her telling of Rock's anger at her accompaning Taylor to the hospital with Clift is mentioned to show his unreasonable and controlling tendencies. If one believes that Hudson's greatest acting was in keeping his dalliances hidden from Gates, his courting reveals him as charming, and perhaps it is his youth that explains his ability to make love to her, even if he had been with a man earlier. Perhaps embittered after the later revelations, Gates describes Hudson as weak and manipulative, using people to fulfill his own ambitions and eventually becoming totally corrupted and empty of feeling. However this accusation, with it's covert justification for his death from AIDS, is perhaps crueler than anything she tells us Hudson had done to her. What forced the end of the relationship was her deliberate strategy to try to distance Hudson from Wilson. Hudson would succeed in this task by himself later on but at the time Gates' attempt was a serious underestimation of Hudson's loyalty and the influence Wilson held over him. Gates says that Hudson only kept Wilson on to protect himself from blackmail. More than once Gates is informed of how hard it is for couples to stay together in the ego-based world of actors and Hollywood. Hudson seemed to appreciate her more as an industry companion than as a wife, and Gates repays him by saying he had the emotional development of a 10 year old, and by ridiculing him with the information that he turned down the Chalton Heston part in Ben Hur because the script was too big for him to read. Although Gates clearly means to present herself as a victim, one retains more sympathy for Hudson. She introduces herself as a religious farmgirl from Minnesota with a large family, an innocent caught up in the big bad world of showbusiness, and she comes across as pious and morally superior. Although we don't learn how she catches the hepatitis that leaves her bedridden for months, the suggestion that Rock passed it onto her from his infidelities, so much the worse in her mind because they were with men, is undermined by her catty aside about his obsession with bodily cleanliness. The observation is also tired pop psychology about trying to wash away one's sins. The book's cover picture is metaphorically creepy - they embrace, neither looking at each other, wearing matching red sweaters, Gates' lipstick like blood and Hudson's lips pale. He is taller but rests his forehead on hers, as if she is his mother. Her arms hold him but we cannot see where his are.

I was fortunate enough to find this book by winning it from an online auction. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Being the only woman to marry Rock Hudson, Miss Gates gives the reader a truly honest insight to what Rock was like during her brief marriage to him. It has a sad ending, but is nevertheless a book you won't want to put down once you start reading it.

If you're a Rock Hudson fan or have an interest in learning more about this complex man, I highly recommend reading it. You won't be disappointed.

This book is organized by county, but it contains no map indicating counties. The index has serious omissions, rendering it almost useless. I wanted to know what was outside South Bend, but South Bend is not in the index. Neither is Gary, for that matter. Don't tell me it's because they're not "off the beaten path;" they are covered in the book. Counties are listed in the index, but of what use is that unless you know what county you're going to be traveling through? This book could be useful to someone with a good map who already knows where he is, but it does little to orient a newcomer or differentiate between one area and another. I have to cross Indiana this summer, and I'd like to take an interesting route, but I can't find one using this book unless I read nearly every page. This book needs itineraries near the major highways, a map indicating counties, and an entirely new index. To its credit, this book contains much information. Better referencing tools would help the reader find it.