The AIDS Crisis: Episode 5 - Leading Men

Hey, this is Leon Napok. I'm the host of Fiasco, but you may also know me from the podcasts Slowburn, Think Twice, Michael Jackson, and Backfired the Vaping Wars. I'm excited to be sharing with you the next season of Backfired, titled Attention Deficit, which is now available exclusively on Audible. Backfired is a podcast about the business of unintended consequences.

It's mysterious, it's deadly, and it's baffling medical science.

The Food and Drug Administration has recommended that any man who has had sex with another man since nineteen seventy seven not donate blood.

You had many people from the radical right expressing really extreme measures.

And I do believe that AIDS is a violation of God's laws.

How many of us have to die before you get off your ass?

We had no other resources but ourselves.

Rock Hudson magnificently proving the power of love and faith in a great performance and lovely.

When Rock Hudson appeared in the romantic comedy Pillow Talk in nineteen fifty nine, he was already one of the most famous leading men in America.

A Beverly Hills, California, It's Rock Hudson honored again with Photoplays Gold Medal the most Popular Actor Award.

Hudson was the very model of the mid century American man, Tall, stoic, and transcendently good looking. According to Life Magazine, he was a towering hunk of handsomeness.

Rock Hudson, six Street four of Fighting Man, Enter, Tame a Wildcat, Beauty makes will read this is Rock Hudson. My new picture, Pillow Talk, brings me together with Doris Day.

But the Pillow Talk was a milestone in Hudson's career, his first romantic comedy and the first of several starring roles opposite Doris Day. The premise of the movie was that Hudson's character was pretending to be gay as part of a ploy to win Day's heart.

Don't you find me attractive?

Why yes, ma'am, of course.

Then why haven't you ever ever what? I'm sorry, foolish.

The characters made repeated references to homosexuality, all of them disguised in wordplay and innuendo.

Either you're not.

Telling the truth or or what. Well, there are some men who just they're very devoted to their mothers, you know, the type that likes to collect cooking recipes, exchange bits of gossip.

But there was a layer of irony to Pillow Talk that few audience members would have known to look for.

Here's a real life gay man playing a straight man who at one point is pretending to be a gay man to Lord Doris Day into bed.

This is Mark Griffin, author of the Rock Hudson biography All That Heaven Allows.

So it's definitely a hall of mirrors, like you know, several layers of surreal.

As a star in the Hollywood studio system, Hudson was an expert presenting a broadly appealing and inoffensive version of himself to the world, but the details of his private life were known to many of the people he worked and socialized with.

It was sort of this silent agreement that nobody was going to talk about homosexuality unless you were among your own and you felt very safe in discussing that.

Hudson's sexuality was something of an open secret in the film industry, and everyone, including Hudson, knew that it would ruin his career if moviegoers ever found out about it.

There was this ironclad expectation that a star, especially one of that magnitude, would never do anything in his private life to embarrass his bosses or worse. At that time, there was a morals clause in each contract player's contract which forbade engaging in any behavior that might be deemed socially unacceptable or immoral, and from there on in for much of his career, Rock is working what I would describe as a sort of very dangerous tight rope act.

The main threat to Hudson's career came from the tabloid press. Hudson's agent is rumored to have once given a journalist damaging information about another one of his own clients in exchange for killing a story about Hudson's sexuality. Another time, there was gossip going around that Hudson might be romantically

We would play these Rock Hudson movies Lover, Come Back and things like that, and I had the strangest feeling when I would look at the screen that I knew him. I can't explain that.

When Jillson and Hudson met in the early seventies, it turned out that Hudson had just installed a home movie theater.

He had a complete movie theater in his home with thirty five millimeter projection equipment. And I said, well, you know what, I used to work in a movie theater. I know how to run the machines. I'll teach you how to do it.

Jillson and his partner grew close to Hudson. They even convinced him to become the first investor in their gift trapping business. Over the years, he would invite them to dinner parties at his Beverly Hills estate, which boasted a one hundred and eighty degree view of Los Angeles and which Hudson called the Castle.

It had a whole two story Spanish hacienda field to it, and he had a piano in the movie theater. And he loved to have his friends over and entertain. They'd all come over, people like Carol Burnett, and they would.

Sing, could I wave the years?

And I'll do like little shows on the stage.

It was really cool, tears away when your eyes.

Are drunk.

Seek.

By the time he was in his mid forties, Hudson was spending less of his time making big movies and more of it on stage, acting in musical theater.

He was in several musicals and he did on the twentieth Century. He did Camelot and he couldn't I mean, he could sing okay, And he just was in seventh Heaven on the theater stage.

He even released an album of covers called rock Gently.

Now that the Summer is come and gone, I'll say goodbye now that the Winner.

In nineteen eighty four, Hudson got a chance to catch up with a couple he had first gotten to know decades earlier in Hollywood, Ronald and Nancy Reagan. As Mark Griffin writes in his book, the two former actors invited Hudson to the White House for an official state dinner to honor the President of Mexico.

President Missus del Madrid Mikaza Essukazza.

At the event, Hudson chatted with the first Lady and took photos with her.

And of all people, Nancy Reagan noticed that when they were posing for photos that he had a blemish on his neck, and that she advised him to have it checked.

Hudson would later tell friends that after he was diagnosed with AIDS, he went home and cried for a week. There were so many unknowns, how long he could keep working, how quickly the disease would progress. The one thing was obvious, Hudson would be living this part of his life the same way he had lived so many others in private. I'm Leon Napock from Audible Origins and Prologue Projects. This is fiasco.

Just what is wrong with Rock Hutson? The nature of his illness has become clouded in mystery and confusion.

Rock.

The news media are clamoring for information. What do you think I should do?

They are violating the laws of nature, and nature is striking back.

Luis, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic?

I think we just have to do the best we can with this problem. I can understand both sides of it.

In this episode, what happened when one of Hollywood's biggest stars became sick with AIDS and what it took to get President Reagan to pay attention to the epidemic. Michael Gottlieb, an immunologist at UCLA, was used to getting referrals for new patients, but it was a new experience for him when a dermatologist in Beverly Hills called him on behalf of an A list celebrity and.

She mentioned his name, Rock Cuts, in which of course a name I knew. So I climbed into my Dodge Aspen that leaked and drove to U Cannon Drive or Rodeo Driver or one of those places.

Gottlieb met with Hudson at the dermatologist's office, and.

Then they left me alone with Rock, and he and I talked, and then I examined him. He showed me this capasi sarcoma lesion that he had on his left forearm.

Gottlieb went through his standard questions, just like he would have with anyone.

Else, and so at one point I asked Roc to hop up on the exam table, and as he did that, I had to look up because he was so tall, and I said, my, you're tall, and he sort of shrugged in a boyish way and said yeah, six ' four.

After a short exam, Gottlieb confirmed what his new patient had already guessed.

I told him I thought he probably did have AIDS. He knew what it was. We talked about the sexual transmission of whatever was causing this, and he had already prepared three or four anonymous letters to go to people with whom he had had intercourse, telling them that they had been exposed to someone who had AIDS, and he was going to mail them once he had confirmation.

Got Leeb diagnosed Rock Hudson with AIDS on June fifth, nineteen eighty four. By that point, more than five thousand other Americans had received the same diagnosis, and roughly three thousand of them had died, but President Ronald Reagan had never once mentioned the disease in public. Reagan had met Rock Hudson back when they were both working actors, but while Hudson was able to make the leap to leading man,

In there with all it win, just one for the Kipper.

Even though Reagan was never especially famous as an actor, he was able to parlay his name recognition into a career in politics. In nineteen sixty six, he ran for governor of California.

The biggest shot in the arm for the American Republican Party in the election of Ronald Reagan as governor of California.

Reagan was unapologetically right wing on issues like crime and welfare, but when it came to gay rights, Reagan's views were not totally caught and dry. Here's historian Rick Pearlstein, author of the book Reaganland.

The first scandal of Reagan's gubernatorial term in nineteen sixty seven happened when several of his aides trapped one of his aids that they considered a bureaucratic rival in a gay relationship in a motel room, you know, using listening devices, and leaked it to the press.

Drew into a publishery board that homosexual reignan been uncovered amongst your administration.

And when this got out, people thought that Reagan's future political ambitions might be checked by this scandal, and instead Ronald Reagan said, you know, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to, you know, through my administration and hold this kind of witch hunt. This is stooping to destroy human beings, innocent people.

According to poles from this time, the vast majority of Americans said they did not know any gay people personally. Reagan was not one of them. He actually had friends he knew were gay.

But the same token he made the same kind of homophobic jokes everyone did. Or he would say, I have no problem with gay's working in state government, but of course they shouldn't be working for the Department of Parks and Recreation. You know, the suggestion that you know, gays were forging through the bushes to kind of, you know, do naughty things.

Reagan reportedly panicked when his son, Ron Junior told him that he wanted to be a ballet dancer, fearing that it meant he might be gay. At the same time, Reagan made a point of opposing an anti gay ballot initiative in California that would have given the school board the right to fire people over their sexuality.

Politicians from Jimmy Carter Torontald Reagan argued, which Hunt said one cheering celebrant. It's obvious gays have a lot of friends in California.

He very specifically debunks the operative argument of the anti gay right side in this huge, defining political fight, which is that gays were trying to recruit young people, you know, into their awful tribe. And he specifically said being gay isn't a choice, which was a very progressive view for the time.

It all gave the impression that Reagan had a certain amount of personal tolerance for gay people, but he was also quick to tell angry constituents that his position wasn't so much about tolerance as it was about opposing government overreach, and he.

Would always reassure them that while he was, you know, against this specific initiative, you know, as an unwarketed government intrusion for lives of individuals, he was absolutely opposed to gay people quote unquote promoting their lifestyle, and that he didn't believe sodomy's statutes should be overturned and that sort of thing.

As President, Reagan preferred to delegate most policy specifics to his cabinet secretaries and other officials. A lot of Reagan's closest advisors were part of the Republican establishment, and as strange as it may sound now, they were worried that aligning too closely with social conservatives like Jerry Folwell would alienate moderate voters. Still, they had to give them something. In the new administration, here again is Rick Pearlstein.

And the solution they arrive at is to make their most prominent patronage hire this guy. See ever Coop.

Ronald Reagan's choice for a surgeon general one of the most controversial decisions taken by the new administration.

I think for precisely the reason that the surgeon General is his very powerless role traditionally that a lot of presidents didn't even bother to fill, you know it kind of like manages, you know, quarantine expections at ports and things like that.

Coop had made a name for himself touring the country as an anti abortion advocate. As surgeon General, he was best known for his crusade against smoking and for his distinctive appearance picture Colonel Sanders in a Navy uniform.

He has this biblical temperament where everything is just kind of black and white. He had this kind of prophetic mean to him. George will described him in a gushing profile as resembling an Old Testament prophet who has just discovered his neighbors making graven images.

Cigarette smoking is clearly identified as the chief preventable cause of death in our society.

He attacked family planning programs for converting adolescent innocence into sexually active teenagers.

Coop said pro.

Abortion statements by Protestant denominations show their superficial theology, lack of morality, and an insensitivity to the eventual reward for their deprivative.

In nineteen eighty two, a reporter at a White House briefing asked Reagan's Press Secretary Larry Speaks about the mysterious disease that had emerged in California, New York, Miami and elsewhere. There were already hundreds of diagnosed cases, but Speaks said he hadn't heard about it.

Does the President have.

Any reactions with the announced from the Center for Disease Control of Atlanta that AIDS is now an epidemic of six over six hundred cases. It's known as gay play.

Oh it is.

I mean, it's a pretty serious thing that one and every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware.

I don't have it?

Are you you?

You don't have it? Well, I'm relieved to hear that you.

Didn't answer my question.

How do you know?

The president of the work the White House looks on this as a great joke.

Now I don't know anything about it, leans Ter.

The president, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic?

Lauri, I don't think so.

I don't think any There been no personal experience here, Leicester.

These comments came against the backdrop of a struggle over AIDS funding that was playing out across various federal agencies, but the President stayed out of the fray. At this point, he had never even said the word AIDS in public, not in a speech, not in a press conference, not in any recorded conversation. It was not until June of nineteen eighty three, at another White House briefing that Reagan's press secretary indicated that the President was at least aware of AIDS.

President has been involved in brief down the AIDE situation a number of months ago in a cabinet meeting, and we have recently, as said, twelve million dollars be reprogrammed for research on age. That's extent of the president's INVOLVMA, which has been.

Laurie, does the President think that it might help if he suggested that gays cut down on their cruising.

Told you.

It's worth mentioning here that the reporter asking this question, the same one you heard in the earlier press conference, was a conservative provocateur named Lester Kinsolving. So while it may sound like he's righteously standing up for people with AIDS, it's more like he was worried that the disease would spread to straight people. He wanted the president to condemn the gay community for endangering everyone else.

I didn't hear your answer.

I just was acknowledge engineer and your interest in this set.

You don't think that it would help if the gays cut down on their cruising.

We're researching if we come up with any any any research that shed some light on whether the gay should cruise or not. Crude were not available to you.

Through the end of his first term. That was the extent of Reagan's involvement in the AIDS epidemic. Confirmation to his press secretary that he had been briefed on the matter for Michael Gottlieb Rock Hudson's new doctor these were exhausting years. Gottlieb had been taking care of people with AIDS as long as anyone. He had co authored the first ever article about it, the one you heard about in Episode one, that was published in the CDC's newsletter

The stigma outweighed everything else. As AIDS and all its baggage, Gottlieb was in a tricky position. As far as he could tell, The UCLA Medical Center was like most hospitals and cities dealing with major AIDS breaks. None of them wanted to be known as an AIDS hospital, And the more Gottlieb used his platform to talk about AIDS, the

When Gottlieb first met Rock Hudson and realized he had AIDS, he understood right away what a big deal it was, or at least could be. If Hudson's died diagnosis ever became public, he would be by far the most famous person known to have AIDS. Real attention might finally be paid to the cause Gottlieb had been dedicating his life

He was doing okay, he had very little ks. It wasn't even worthy of treatment that was so minor it wasn't in any cosmetically sensitive location. Now he could continue his work.

Gottlieb continued to check in on Hudson's symptoms and update him on the latest developments in AIDS research. There were some experimental treatments being tested in the US, but Gottlieb had very little faith in them. Then he heard about a French drug called HPA twenty three that had shown some promise against leukemia in mice.

That was a very large leap of faith to think that it might be effective against HIV and man. However, the French doctors were making it available to certain American patients who were traveling there to receive it as intravenous infusions.

Hudson's condition was worsening, so Gottlieb thought the treatment was worth a try.

Yes, it was a long shot, but he was willing to fly to Paris and take this experimental drug.

So Hudson made the trip to Paris, ostensibly to attend a film festival. After receiving the treatment, he flew back to the United States to appear in the hit TV show Dynasty.

And You feel wonderful, Yes, product very you shouldn't.

Why not because you got a long way to go before you can feel so damn good about yourself.

I remember, you know, seeing Rock on Dynasty and saying to myself, you know, he really shouldn't be on TV right now because he looked so well.

In the summer of nineteen eighty five, Hudson met up with his old friend and pill Talk co star Doris Day. She was hosting a new TV show about animals on the Christian Broadcast Network, and she brought Hudson on as a special guest.

He look great.

Day would later describe being shocked by Hudson's appearance at the taping. He was only fifty nine, but he somehow looked older, and he sounded weak and tired.

We really had fun making movies, Yeah, didn't we?

Yeah?

What was your favorite movie?

What was my favorite? I think I like Pillow Talk?

Yeah?

Did you No?

I liked High Stage in Zebra.

At a promotional event for the show, reporters noticed the changes in Hudson's appearance. Hudson's agent told them he was in perfect health and at the weight he had shed was the result of a new diet, but the actor's appearance still made national news.

It takes it's no.

Expert to see that something is seriously wrong with a fifty nine year old actor. Here he is just a few years ago on a Live at five set, and here just last week with a former co star, Doris Day, down considerably from the two hundred pounds Hudson normally carried on his six foot four inch frame.

Michael Gottlie was watching all of this press coverage and seeing Hudson's reps lie about his patient's health made him acutely aware of the tension between his two roles as a doctor and an activist.

My primary job is to be a physician and to hold to the tenets and the oaths of our profession. And the patient is number one, and he's entitled to his privacy and what other people say publicly, whether it's the truth or a lie, as of no consequence to me. Yes, As someone who's interested in social justice, someone who sees HIV AIDS as a cause, Yes, of course, it would be a shot in the arm to have a celebrity

A major potential benefit of a famous person disclosing his diagnosis was that it would help educate the general public. Misinformation about AIDS and how it could be spread was rampant. Even though the science said AIDS could only be transmitted through blood or other bodily fluids, there was still widespread fear that one could get it just by touching someone.

Doctor Anthony Fauci, writing in the Journal of the AMA, says his study shows some children have picked up AIDS within their families, and that means, says doctor Fauci, the scope of the syndrome be enormous.

Children were getting AIDS from their parents through in uterotransmission, but Fauchi didn't know that for sure, and he speculated that it might be spread through close physical contact. Rick Pearlstein again, and this was really a panic watershed. This is when cops and firefighters start wearing masks and gloves.

People are afraid of AIDS because they don't know much about it except that it kills. So when a person contracts the disease.

He often finds people try to get away from him or to get rid.

Of him, you know, kind of panicked newspaper articles Long Island Grammar dead of AIDS, which was from her blood transfusion. But it was easy to kind of imagine from the headline that she was just kind of like walking around and came too close to someone or something like that.

This man is also a flight attendant. He does not have AIDS, but he lost his job anyway. He has swollen glens and that caused the airline to suspect he might have the disease.

I am a healthy gay man and I went through the same discrimination.

This is really when the Christian right itself really kind of begins to go gaga. You begin to see vigilante violence. You have this terrible controversy over the holding of a gay rodeo and reno in which a minister there says, I think we should do what the Bible says and cut their throats.

Well, you could have typhoid Mary's.

They are violating the laws of nature, and nature is striking back.

And it's very easy to conclude if you're a normal American reading normal newspapers and not just the Christian right that we have this kind of invasion of the body snatchers, invisible population among us that might even devour the earth.

By the time Rok Hudson made his appearance with Doris Day in the middle of nineteen eighty five, thirteen thousand Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS. More than half of them had died. Meanwhile, the President was facing increased pressure

We want to identify every person who's a carrier, and we want to be open and honest about this disease before it becomes a really serious national health threat.

Some of Reagan's conservative allies tried to convince the president to increase testing and surveillance and to ban people with HIV from entering the country.

But more controversial are proposals to find and segregate those exposed to AIDS, to prohibit those with AIDS from working in healthcare, to make it a felony for those in an aide's high risk group, to knowingly donate blood, and to prohibit children with AIDS from attending school.

The people pushing these policies felt like they had a potential ally in the administration who's well positioned to help their cause Surgeon General see Effett Coup.

When AIDS begins to raise up as a public is shoe, the Christian right actually reaches out to the Vagan administration and says, why aren't you letting see if Ittt Coops speak out on this issue, assuming that he's going to be an ally of theirs, and as a matter of fact, as he writes in his memoir, he'd been very explicitly instructed that he wasn't to say a word about AIDS.

In response to growing fear of AIDS transmission among the general public and mounting criticism from multiple sides about the lack of federal response, the White House decided it was time for the President to say something, so in September of nineteen eighty five, the Press Office started putting together some talking points, But when a copy of the President's briefing was circulated to the White House Council's Office for review, a lawyer named John Roberts, suggested several passages be taken

I have to remember this was at the very beginning of the AIDS coming into public consciousness, and I was just concerned that the President not be giving out medical statements if people weren't absolutely sure that.

It was correct.

In any event, the talking point about casual contact was removed at the end of the day. Who could argue with going above and beyond to protect America's kids?

What do you need? Please be seated? I have a statement here.

At a press conference on September seventeenth, nineteen eighty five, Reagan defended his administration's response to the AIDS crisis and called it a top priority.

It will amount to over half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing this.

It was the first time Reagan had ever said the word AIDS in public, four years after the first cases emerged and two years after his press secretary first said he was aware of it. Then Reagan said something that made public health experts wins. When it came to the school's issue, the President said he could understand both sides.

I also have compassionate and I think we all do for the child that has this and doesn't know and can't have it explained to him, why somehow he is now an outcast and can no longer associate with his playmates and schoolmates. On the other hand, I can understand the problem of the parents. It is true that some medical sources have said that this cannot be communicated in any way other than the ones we already know in which would not involve a child being in the school.

In truth, doctors had come forth and said exactly that. But the president's comment gave anyone who wanted it permission to be afraid. During the summer of nineteen eighty five, Rock Hudson's health was rapidly deteriorating. Days after his appearance with Doris Day in California, he flew back to Paris, hoping to receive another transfusion of the experimental drug HPA twenty three. Hudson had booked a room at the Ritz Carlton. When he got there, he collapsed in the lobby and

Just what is wrong with Rock Hudson? The nature of his illness has become clouded in mystery and confusion. Yesterday it was reported that Hudson had liver cancer and possibly A's, but today the hospital denied the cancer story and said nothing about the A's rumor.

Hudson's pr rep, who had accompanied him to the hospital, insisted that everything was fine and he looks wonderful.

I must say, you guess you did?

He said, how are you?

I said, I'm fine.

Tomorrow, nearly four thousand miles away in Washington, d c Ronald Reagan watched the coverage as he himself recuperated from cancer surgery. It was then that he asked his physician to explain AIDS to him for the very first time. Behind the scenes, Rock Hudson's handlers were desperate. They tried to get their client transferred to a French military hospital, where they believed he'd be able to get his experimental drug treatment, but because he was not a French citizen,

And he said, we're making arrangements for Rock to come back to you. We've chartered this seven forty seven. They've pulled out all the seats from the first class compartment and they have bolted in a hospital bed and he's going to be flying back to Los Angeles at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

When Hudson's plane landed in Los Angeles, hundreds of reporters were there waiting for him.

In the darkness before dawn. On Air France jumbo jet arrived in Los Angeles, bringing Rock Hudson home for what maybe the last time.

Cameramen with telescopic lenses were perched on rooftops at the airport. They filmed Hudson as he was wheeled to a helicopter, which took off for UCLA Medical Center. At this point, Michael Gottlieb had been seeing Hudson in secret for over a year. Now it looked like the secret was about to come out.

It's two or three in the morning, and I'm standing on the roof waiting for him, and the skies are a wash. In helicopters, there's news crews flying back and forth, and so it was a dramatic moment, not knowing what his condition's going to be, but knowing that you're going to have to bring out the full court press if he's going to survive, and the first time I look at him, I just see he's mortally ill.

Hudson was delirious. Gottlieb got him hooked up to an IV and treated his nu missists pneumonia with antibiotics. When Hudson was lucid, Gottlieb knew that it was time for the conversation.

I'm getting flooded with calls from the press or somehow coming through to my office, and so then I have a conversation with Rock. The news media are clamoring for information. What do you think I should do? And sitting by his bedside, you know, we have a conversation about the fact that in Paris they made an announcement that you had aids. What do you want me to do here? Do you want me to confirm that? And he says, look, if it will do some good, go ahead.

With the green light from Hudson, UCLA Medical Center alerted the media that there would be a press conference.

It's kind of a pivotal moment. And I'm an ordinary guy. I'm thrust in the limelight, not exactly by choice. I'm a guy who expected to spend his life with patients and in the lab and not a public figure. Am I ready for prime time? I didn't train for prime time?

Given how famous rock Hudson was, the announcement was staged in a way that, to Gottlieb, seemed conspicuously muted.

So they organized a press conference in the auditorium of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, which is on Westwood Boulevard. It's kind of out of the way. We're not doing a press conference in front of the medical center like other hospitals would do for acceptable diseases. In this instance, they send out this junior professor, Michael Gottlieb, to break the news without anyone being there to provide moral or other support.

Let me introduce rock Cousin's attending physician at UCLA, doctor Michael Gottlieb, who is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Immunology in the UCLA School of Medicine.

Finally, the national media was clamoring for information about AIDS, but instead of taking the opportunity to educate the public or answer questions, all Gottlieb felt he could do was read a short statement.

Rock Hudson was transferred from the American Hospital in Paris to the UCLA Medical Center early today, mister Hudson is being evaluated and treated for complications of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

And it's a very brief statement which I read, and then we didn't take questions. Sorry, I cannot do.

That at this time.

It's a total embarrassment because you've invited the press to hear some news of substance, and I felt constrained. I felt as if there was a lot to say with regards to Rock Hudson, with regards to AIDS, and it was an opportunity that was missed.

Nevertheless, the announcement had an immediate seismic impact.

Hudson, in becoming the first celebrity to have a publicly acknowledged case of age, has brought a new round of attention to the fatal disease.

Now that a household name had gotten sick, America's attention was on AIDS. As journalist Randy Schiltz later wrote, there were two clear phases to the disease in the United States. There was AIDS before Rock Hudson, and AIDS after the.

Fact that Rock Hudson has AIDS.

Is that going to help public awareness? Now? We would hope.

That people across the country would take note and.

Perhaps stimulate their interest to find out more about the disease.

The announcement provoked two seemingly contradictory reactions. First, that Hudson's diagnosis was tantamount to coming out as gay. That even though Gottlieb hadn't said anything about Hudson's private life, the rumors that had circulated about him were all but confirmed. Second, the news that Rock Hudson had AIDS meant that it

Hudson sent a statement read by actor Burt Lancaster.

I'm not happy that I have AIDS, but if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive work.

Just two weeks later, Rock Hudson was dead.

The carner arrived at Hudson's home in bel Air at ten forty five this morning. As friends gathered and emotions ran high. News cameras were kept at a distance as the body was moved into the Corner's van.

Towels were used to cover up the windows.

Ken Jilson, the friend who had taught Hudson how to use a movie projector, was enlisted to help plan his memorial service. At first, he was imagining a large event at Forest Lawn Cemetery, but then he got a call from a friend that Elizabeth Taylor was taking things in a different direction.

And he goes, guess what, Elizabeth has changed the whole thing. We're going to have a memorial in his backyard, and we'll have Margarita's Mariachi's, and it'll be a very upbeat thing in the backyard with one hundred people I'll send telegrams to people, and that's what it will be.

The Margherita's and Mariachi Memorial was set up in Hudson's backyard with the one hundred and eighty degree view of Los Angeles. It was guaranteed to be a media circus, but special precautions were taken to keep things under control.

And they had a lot of security to try to keep the paparazzi away, and there were helicopters, and what they had done, which was very smart, they put a big white tent in the backyard so that the whole event could not be filmed from the air.

Despite these measures, a photographer dressed in camouflage tried to climb up the side of the canyon behind the house, and the neighbors sold access to her yard to reporters for three hundred dollars each.

And Carol Burnett spoke. But Carol Burnett was so destroyed when she finished her speech, she just ran out of the house and couldn't deal with it. And no one could believe it that, wow, this guy fifty nine years old is really gone.

The New York Daily News canvassed local rock huts and fans for their reactions to his death. Most said their favorite of his films was Pillow Talk. Some said they had heard rumors about him even before the announcement. Only one said she would have nothing to do with the man anymore. I think about him the way he is on the screen, said one woman. That will always be Rock Hudson. Hudson was approximately the ten thousandth person with

And on hearing of his death, the House of Representatives agreed to double the amount of AIDS funds for research next year. There will now be one hundred and ninety million dollars.

According to an analysis by The Los Angeles Times, Media coverage of AIDS more than tripled in the six months after Hudson's death. At the same time, the controversy over kids with AIDS attending school was continuing to heat up. The most prominent case involved a name you may have heard before.

These people are raising money and signing petitions in a fight to keep Ryan White out of their school.

Ryan White was thirteen years old. He had contracted HIV through the Factor eight he used to manage his humophilia. Many of his classmate's parents wanted him banned from attending school.

He has a spill on a table, a chair, something, Your daughter comes in.

They say they wipe, but your daughter comes in touches it.

Hey, what's to say she is not going to get it.

The attention garnered by Rock Hudson and Ryan White led to increased awareness of AIDS and how it could be prevented, but it also generated a lot of fear and misinformation and knew so called safety measures that were not based in science. In Indiana, Ryan White's school forced him to use a separate bathroom and disposable utensils. In Hollywood, concerns about Rock Hudson's Dynasty kissing scene with Linda Evans led

Caution is also advocated by Screen Actors Guild president ed Asna.

How wonderful be if everybody stopped kissing on film until we know more about this horrible disease.

Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and Ryan White was an innocent kid. What they had in common was that neither of them fit the stereotypes widely associated with AIDS and homosexuality. Hudson and White made it clear that AIDS could happen to anyone. In so doing, they helped turn the disease into a cause among a lot of influential people.

This songs for.

Elton.

John dedicated a song to him at Farm Made four, while Donald Trump and Michael Jackson visited his mother yesterday.

And consoled her.

Hollywood loved Ryan and White. The brave young man who battled that dread disease and the infectious prejudice surrounding it, inspired stars around the world.

His story.

About four months after Rock Hudson's death, Reagan asked Surgeon General see Everett Coop to prepare a formal report on the AIDS epidemic. The President was finally giving Coop the go ahead to speak to the American people about AIDS, but when it came to federal funding, Reagan was less inclined to change his tune. Here again is historian Rick Pearlstein.

And this is right around the times. You know, he's basically proposing his budget, and the headline in newsday is sharp cuts and AIDS funding socked. And for fiscal nineteen eighty seven, he proposed spending about thirteen percent less than the original nineteen eighty six level. So he's simultaneously calling for cuts and ordering a major government report on AIDS.

Coop had spent years following White House guidance not to discuss AIDS publicly. Many of his servative allies expected that his report would be similarly restrained, but much to their surprise, that was not at all what Coop had in mind.

He spends nights and weekends at a stand up desk in the basement of his townhouse, poring over every version, carefully choosing every word. Anthony Fauci reviewed every draft, surely with his earlier gaff right very much on his mind. Fauci was quoted in the post, I was encouraging him to push it to the limit of what he could get away with.

The nation's most senior medical official has added his voice to the increasingly vocal concern about AIDS.

When Coop released his report in October of nineteen eighty six, he appeared to put his role as a public health official ahead of any political loyalties. He wrote that the country was fighting a disease, not people, and delivered information about the epidemic in extraordinarily plain language.

He talks about seamen. He mentions anal sex right. He talks about unprotected sex. He talks about condoms. He says that sexual education and as frank as possible, should begin an early childhood.

We're talking about death here. We're talking about death now. Many people, especially our youth, are not receiving information that is vital to their future health and well being because of our reticence in dealing with the subjects of sex, sexual practices, and homosexuality.

Coop says he's not advocating avoiding specific lifestyles.

If you are going to indulge in certain types of sexual activity, there are ways to protect yourself.

Coop was now one of the country's most prominent advocates for comprehensive sex education. If his explicit and straightforward approach thrilled many AIDS experts protectors, it also infuriated many White House officials who are wary of alienating Reagan's base.

This kind of civil war is breaking out over see every Cooper.

Here's doctor Coop fronting for the homosexual lobby, and we would like to see him dismissed as a public statement by President Reagan.

There is growth sentiment in the White House that Reagan should deliver a major address to the nation about AIDS.

If the President were to go on TV and endorse Coop's ideas about AIDS prevention, he could go a long way towards changing cultural norms about condoms and sex education. But Gary Bauer, one of the President's top domestic policy advisors, thought that idea was ridiculous and beneath the office of the president.

Quote, I'm not sure I want to take the president on nationwide TV saying well, the only two ways to avoid AIDS are abstinence and masturbation. I mean, there are some things that are presidential in things that are not.

On the whole Reagan took Gary Bauer's advice. Though he did start referring to AIDS as the number one public health priority of his administration, he did not speak about condoms or attempt to turn his advisors against abstinence only education. Meanwhile,

The interesting thing to me was we'd come into these senators chambers and she would introduce me as the discoverer of AIDS, and they would pay no attention to me whatsoever. Elizabeth would be all gussied up and totally made up, and her hair perfect and wearing her jewels, and they just ate it up.

Before the event, Taylor communicated privately with the President an old friend from Hollywood, and convinced him to give the keynote address. The knight of the gala May thirty first, nineteen eighty seven was warm and brief. Forty four thousand Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS and nearly twenty seven thousand had died. The event was set up in a big tent that was decorated with red and pink flowers.

Gentlemen, the President of the United States and Missus.

Reagan, I want to talk tonight about the disease that has brought us all together. It has been talked about, and I'm going to continue the The poet W. H. Auden said that the true men of action in our times are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. I believe that's especially true when it comes to the AIDS epidemic.

Reagan's speechwriter had met with public health experts and political advisors while he crafted the address. Safe and at first, the President's remarks seem to closely track with the medical community's advice.

America faces a disease that is fatal and spreading, and this calls for urgency, not panic. It calls for compassion not blamed. We're still learning about how AIDS is transmitted. But experts tell us you don't get it from telephones or swimming pools or drinking fountains. You don't get it from shaking hands or sitting on a bus or anywhere else for that matter. As dangerous and deadly as AIDS is, many of the fears surrounding it are unfounded. These fears are based on ignorance.

Michael Gottlieb listened to these words with relief and satisfaction.

I was excited, but then he gives you a kick in that. You know what.

The speech took a turn about three quarters of the way through.

That same speech, announce the travel ban against people with HIV.

I've also asked HHS to add the AIDS virus to the list of contagious diseases for which immigrants and aliens seeking permanent residents in the United States can be denied entry. They are presently entry for.

Other inciting a great deal of displeasure among the crowd.

Let me turn to what the States can.

Do once again. Reagan seemed to be siding with the most reactionary voices in his administration for the AIDS activists in the room. It was enraging to hear the President talk about acceptance and compassion and keeping people with AIDS out of the country. In the same breath, the President gave his first major speech on the subject to night.

One that drew both cheers and jeers. The proposals, which were championed by conservative factions in the administration, were unpopular with many in the audience. Demonstrators outside marched in memory of those who died of AIDS and called for more research money We.

Got the The activists inside the amphar benefit who booed Reagan made national news, as did the hundreds of protesters chanting and lighting candles outside. The groups that had begun in New York, San Francisco and across the country were now larger, bolder, and more professionalized. They were tired of waiting years for incremental political developments. They were tired of waiting years for the results of drug trials that were conducted in complete secrecy. They were not going to wait anymore.

Now that the summer is come and gone, I'll say goodbye. Now that the winter is coming on, I'll say goodbye. I'm not the first man or.

The last on the next episode of Fiasco, a new activist or organization forms and mounts a revolutionary fight for access to experimental drugs.

We've tried to be good little boys and girls.

We've tried to work within the system.

We just want to.

Raise the issues.

We are dying.

For every star that falls to work on Lew and Low for every Dream.

Fiasco is presented by Audible Originals and Prologue Projects. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons, Sam Graham, Felsen, Madewin, Kaplan, Ulla Colpa, and me Leon Nafock. Our researcher is Francis Carr. Editorial support from Jessica Miller and Nora waswas archival research by Michelle Sullivan. The vice president of Audible Studios is Mike Charzik. The editor in chief for Audible Originals is David Blum. This season's music is composed by Edith Mudge.