Nancy Reagan Refused Rock Hudson’s Request For Help Months Before He Died

Buzzfeed has published an article that details how Rock Hudson, suffering from AIDS, asked Nancy Reagan for help. And how she denied his simple request. 

Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner late last night published an infuriating article, “Nancy Reagan Turned Down Rock Hudson’s Plea For Help Nine Weeks Before He Died.” Hudson, sick in France, had a telegram sent to the White House asking to merely allow him to see a doctor at an American military hospital who had been working to help people with AIDS. Geidner describes the request as “a simple plea,” and yet, ultimately, Mrs. Reagan denied it.

“Only one hospital in the world can offer necessary medical treatment to save life of Rock Hudson or at least alleviate his illness,” Hudson’s publicist, Dale Olson, wrote in his cable in July of 1985.

Here’s the context, as Geidner explains:

Although more than 5,500 people had died from the disease by the start of 1985, the government had taken few significant steps toward addressing the disease — with the Reagan administration recommending a $10 million cut in AIDS spending down to $86 million in its federal budget proposal released in February 1985.

And so, Hudson traveled to France, hoping to see Dr. Dominique Dormant, a French army doctor who had secretly treated him for AIDS the past fall. Dormant, though, was unable to get the actor transferred to the military hospital. Initially, the doctor wasn’t even able to get permission to see Hudson at the American Hospital.

[Bolding ours]

Just one year prior, in May of 1984 Hudson had attended a State Dinner (photo), but excused his appearance to the First Lady by claiming he had a “flu bug.”

When the telegram came in, Mark Weinberg, a 23-year old Reagan staffer, called the First Lady, knowing the two were friends, having worked in Hollywood.

Just days before, news and gossip were spreading quickly that Hudson was in France, and had AIDS.

Weinberg recommended to Nancy Reagan that the White House refer the matter to the U.S. Embassy in France, because, as he told BuzzFeed News, “This is probably not the [last] time we’re going to get a request like this and we want to be fair and not do anything that would appear to favor personal friends.”

“The Reagans were very conscious of not making exceptions for people just because they were friends of theirs or celebrities or things of that kind. That wasn’t — they weren’t about that. They were about treating everybody the same,” he told BuzzFeed News.

But some dispute the claim that the Reagans were just being “fair” to everyone.

Told of the communications and Weinberg’s explanation, Peter Staley — an early member of ACT UP and founder of the Treatment Action Group who was prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated AIDS documentary How To Survive a Plague — was incredulous.

“Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years,” Staley told BuzzFeed News, pointing out a time when President Reagan personally intervened to assist a fundraising effort led by Bob Hope, as detailed in a biography of the entertainer. “I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him. There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”

Hudson died that same year, just nine weeks later, on October 2.

Geidner’s article is an excellent read, with far more details, many infuriating. It’s a sobering reminder and an important tool against the GOP’s attempts to re-write the Reagans’ history.

 

Image via Wikimedia