Henry Willson

Henry Willson started out in Hollywood in the early 1930s as a journalist, writing articles about young actors for movie magazines. He discovered Lana Turner in the late 1930s, and later represented her as a talent agent. In the 1940s, he worked for the producer David O. Selznick before returning to agenting full-time, though he did try his hand at production like David O.'s older brother, 'Myron Selznick', being credited as associate producer on the film Come September (1961). In addition to Turner, he represented Joan Fontaine and Natalie Wood, but his bread and butter was his stable of "beef cake" male stars, the epitome of which was Rock Hudson, the "Galatea" to his "Pygmalion". For at time in the 1950s, he was one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. Willson's niche as an agent was handsome young men, whom he would rechristen with a new moniker as part of the assembly process of his "Adonis factory", according to the biography "The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson" by 'Robert Hofler'. In addition to Hudson (nee Roy Fitzgerald), the Adonis Factory's product included Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison (the original "beefcake" male starlet in the lingo of the Hollywood Trades), Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, John Saxon, and the twins he renamed Dack and Dirk Rambo. Though he did not require it, the willingness of a good looking young man to share the "casting couch" with Willson was very much appreciated. (Willsson also represented straight actors, like the aforementioned Madison, and even actors who did not have to change their names, like Robert Wagner.) Willson was very generous with his money and time, spending both on his young protégés. Willson masterfully used the press and leveraged his relationships with the stars to build up his new clients. After Lana Turner achieved superstar status, Willson pimped for her, providing her with well-hung young studs (according to his biographer Hofler, it was a taste in "beef cake" he shared with La Lana). As a payback, Turner attend a movie premiere with a new Willson client, Francis Durgin (renamed by Willson "Rory Calhoun"). The publicity made Calhoun's career, who up to that time, had had only delivered one line in his on-screen in his movie career. An example of Willson's genius was his successful transformation of Art Gelien, who like Roy Fitzgerald, was gay, into the pre-fabricated teen idol Tab Hunter in the 1950s. Seen on the arm of Willson clients like Natalie Wood, "Tab Hunter" became famous despite his synthetic personality and lack of good movie roles, receiving 62,000 valentines from smitten fans -- one would assume, mostly females -- in 1956. Hunter's celebrity was press driven; fan magazines devoted pages and pages to him, mostly made up drivel, even before he had appeared in enough movies that would have justified such publicity. The former journalist Willson was brilliant in manipulating the fan press, and as long as one of his gay clients was game and would play by the rules -- to stay deeply closeted, to appear out on "dates" with women (Hunter and his lover Anthony Perkins, another deeply closeted star, would double-date with actresses so they could spend a night out on the town together), and to be very very discrete -- he would remain intensely loyal to them. If a gay actor broke the rules or was unwilling to play this highly hypocritical game, Willson would drop them immediately, as he had no desire to lose money investing in an actor whose career could be stymied by the homophobia of the day. Hunter, in his own autobiography, said that there was a tacit understanding with the press in the 1950s, which he mastered in order to keep his lifestyle, and his privacy: "Act discreetly, and people would respect your right to privacy." No one in the press got wind of his affairs with other men, even with someone as famous as Tony Perkins. On his part, Willson never lived with another man and would not allow his gay clientèle to, either. It was a rule he strictly enforced, through surveillance of his clients. He punished those who disobeyed him by denying them work. When he took men out on a night on the town, it was always in a group of at least three, as two men could be construed as a date while three or more was seen as a night out with the boys. Keeping up a straight front, Willson escorted actresses and other famous women to Hollywood premieres and parties, and encouraged and enabled his gay clients to do so too. He shored up his heterosexual bona fides by occasionally leaking news about his "engagement" to a notable woman, including Margaret Truman, President Harry S. Truman's daughter. His greatest creation, Rock Hudson, would be the summit of Willson's career -- Rock was the top movie star of 1957 and 1959, and ranked in the top three from 1960 to 1964 -- but Hudson's lack of discretion would also prove to be Willson's undoing. Roy Fitzgerald, whom Willson met in 1947, was an awkward former truck driver and WW2 Navy vet who was renamed and remodeled by the agent. In addition to fixing Fitzgerald's teeth, his "heterosexual" persona, his smile, his walk and his voice, and even his marriage were all fabricated by Willson, who succeeded in making a major matinée idol out of the man who was known to the world as Rock Hudson. Willson had private detectives on retainer and employed off-duty L.A.P.D. officers to harass potential blackmailers, and may have even called in favors from the Mafia to have blackmailers eliminated. The trouble reached its crescendo in the mid-'50s when "Confidential" magazine, the infamous rag that peddled the peccadilloes of the stars that the fan magazines and mainstream newspapers wouldn't run, closed in on Hudson. "Confidential" had a $10,000 bounty on Hudson, should someone come forward with the goods. In 1955, Willson made a trade with "Confidential" -- they would quash any information on Hudson in exchange for the skinny on Rory Calhoun's criminal career (he was an ex-convict). In addition to the dirt on Calhoun, who was one of Willson's own clients, he fed "Confidential" news on Tab Hunter's 1950 arrest at a homosexual bacchanal. Hunter had left Willson and had signed on with a rival agent. The aftermath of Willson's trade-off with "Confidential" (a Faust-bargain that was widely known throughout Hollywood) was disastrous for the agent. Willson insisted that Hudson marry to put the kibosh on the gay rumors, and in hastily arranged nuptials, Willson's secretary, Phyllis Gates, was the bride. (Gates claimed for the rest of her life that she married Rock not realizing he was homosexual.) In the aftermath of Willson's Faust-bargain, the driving force behind Hudson's quickly marriage became the stuff of legendary gossip. Rock Hudson and Henry Willson had been effectively outed, even if just locally, in Hollywood. Rock did fine, but Willson suffered. While Willson had many straight cine's, the rumor mill had it that if you were represented by Henry Willson, then you must be homosexual. According to his biographer Hofler, some of Willson's former clients, including Robert Wagner, began to deny that they he had ever represented them. Willson had achieved fame and power as a creator of stars, and now the very currency of his fame and power, the stars themselves, began to reject him. Willson was soon washed up in Hollywood. Rock threw him a bone in the early '60s, allowing him to be an associate producer on his 1961 comedy "Come September." Alas, the Hollywood studios that thrived on the falseness and fabrications of "Tinsel-town" faltered and died in the 1960s, and Willson failed to make the transition to the post-studio era and faltered along with them. Henry Willson, a man who had pioneered the Hollywood game, believed in it too deeply, and when the game began to fail him, he did not recover. He continued to live as highly as he did when he was a top earner, and it broke him financially. By 1972, Willson was bartering his silverware and antiques -- holdovers from a better, more prosperous time -- piece by piece to his housekeeper in exchange for her continuing to work for him. In the end, he was reduced to charity, a resident of the Motion Picture Country Home indigent show people, where he lived until he died on November 2, 1978 at the age of 67. At the end, there wasn't enough money to carve his own name on his tombstone.