Hudson, and Phyllis Gates, secretary to the actor's business agent, cut their wedding cake after their marriage at Santa Barbara, Calif., Nov. To suppress a former lover's threats to expose him as homosexual, and thus very likely wreck his budding film career, Hudson married Phyllis Gates, his business agent's secretary, in 1955. Since his first days in Hollywood in his 20s, rumors about Hudson's sexual preferences had been common. government licensed a blood test to detect the AIDS virus and screening of the national blood supply began, but overall efforts to find drugs to treat, and perhaps cure, sufferers were still moving slowly. government health officials who said 'casual person-to-person contact, as would occur among schoolchildren, appears to pose no risk.'īy 1985, AIDS had killed an estimated 12,000 or more Americans, with a very high mortality rate among those infected. That worsened the stigma for those who were afflicted, and it diluted the advice of U.S. The president also expressed skepticism about whether children infected with the AIDS virus should be allowed to remain in school. He defended his administration's anti-AIDS research spending during a news conference in September 1985, about two weeks before Rock Hudson died. President Ronald Reagan would not speak publicly about AIDS and the need to combat the disease for years after he took office in 1981.
