#lee garlington

Dir. Donald G. Jackson

Rock Hudson and his boyfriend Lee Garlington in candid personal snapshots taken in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico while they were on vacation in 1963. Rock, then 38, met Lee, 25, on the Universal Studios lot the year before where Lee was working as an extra in films. "Nobody in their right mind came out," Garlington stated in a 2015 interview with People magazine. "It was career suicide. We all pretended to be straight. I'd come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning. I'd sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn't hear. We thought we were being so clever." After a female fan broke into Hudson's estate and slept in their bed while they were out of town, their paranoia about being outed increased. "In a drawer on a side table were pictures of me with no shirt on," Lee recalled. "She didn't find them, but it shook him up. He realized he was vulnerable. He put gates on the house after that." Though they broke up in 1965, Garlington had lifelong fond memories of Hudson. "He was a sweetheart. I adored him. Rock had no pretense. He was always casual. He liked to wear chinos and moccasins around the house and hang around and watch television. We'd go on road trips and sometimes he wouldn't tell the studio where he was going." Following Rock's death from AIDS in 1985 at the age of 59, Garlington learned how much their relationship had meant to Hudson when his biographer, Sara Davidson, revealed he'd told her in his dying days that Lee was his "true love". Garlington recalled: "I broke down and cried. I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him."

Rock Hudson and Lee Garlington in 'Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed'

SNEAKERS (1992) dir. Phil Alden Robinson

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