Rock Hudson annoyed James Dean by ‘hitting’ on him, documentary reveals

The characters that Rock Hudson and James Dean play in the acclaimed 1956 film, “Giant,” don’t like each other very much.

It turns out that it wouldn’t have been hard for either star to convey that antipathy onscreen, as the new documentary, “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” reveals. Hudson admitted in a 1983 interview that he didn’t “particularly like” Dean, while Dean didn’t appreciate Hudson “hitting” on him when he thought that Hudson had gone to great lengths to keep his sexual orientation hidden from the American public.

“Dean considered it hypocritical that Rock was maintaining this hetero facade in public while privately hitting on Dean,” Hudson’s biographer Mark Griffin recalled in the Max documentary.

The documentary charts Hudson’s journey, as he arrived in Hollywood in the late 1940s, quickly rose to stardom in the early 1950s and became one of the film word’s biggest stars. It also shows that Hudson was unambiguous about being gay in his private life. But he and his managers were committed to maintaining the idea that he was the model of mid-century heterosexual manhood. The image crumbled when Hudson revealed in the summer of 1985 that he was dying of AIDS, and the truth about his sexual orientation became known.

Dean was the immediate target of rumors that he was gay when he started to become famous, according to a 2021 Esquire essay that praised Dean as a “queer icon.”  “Much ink would be spilled over the years trying to pin down his sexuality — straight, bisexual, gay, asexual all found their advocates,” Esquire said.

Dean spent his short life trying to resist labels, according to Esquire. He once told a reporter, “I’m not homosexual, but I’m not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.” In fact, Dean had relationships with both men and women, according to Esquire, citing biographies and other accounts over the years. He had a tempestuous high-profile romance with actress Pier Angeli, but he also moved in with a much older man, who served as his agent, when he was 20 and had a sexual relationship with him, Esquire said. The late screenwriter William Bast, who wrote a biography of Dean, also said they had an affair.

According to the Max documentary, Hudson and Dean’s conflicting views about sexuality and fame is one of the reasons the two men clashed on the set of “Giant.” In a 1983 interview recorded at his home in Los Angeles, Hudson got candid when he talked about working with Dean.  “Jimmy was new and hot,” Hudson said. “I didn’t particularly like him, personally.”

Griffin suggested that there were a number of reasons there was no love lost between the two stars. “Giant,” a generation-spanning epic about a Texas ranch family and the rise of the oil industry, was filmed in the spring and summer of 1955, according to a biography of director George Stevens.  One can assume that the actors also didn’t get along because they came from two different acting traditions and probably had different approaches to their craft and to being movie stars.

Hudson had been groomed through the Hollywood studio system and established himself as a leading man in the hit romantic films, “Magnificent Obsession” and “All That Heaven Allows.” Dean probably thought of himself as a “serious” actor, given that he was trained in New York in “The Method,” the style that nurtured the talents of Marlon Brandon and Montgomery Clift.