LOS ANGELES – Phyllis Gates, the talent agent’s secretary who said she had no idea that Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson was gay when she married him after a whirlwind romance, died Jan. 4 of lung cancer complications. She was 80.
Gates died at her home in Marina del Rey, Calif., her attorney, Mark Waldman, said Wednesday.
Gates was working as a secretary for Hudson’s agent when the couple met in October 1954. He asked her out a few days later, and the couple were married Nov. 9, 1955.
“I couldn’t believe that this was really happening to me, that Phyllis Gates of Monte- video, Minn., was marrying Rock Hudson, the movie star,” she wrote in her 1987 book, “My Husband, Rock Hudson.”
She would eventually learn the romance had been arranged to dispel rumors that Hudson was gay.
After they divorced in 1958, Gates said she never saw Hudson again. He died of AIDS in 1985 at age 59.
Gates, who never remarried, said she had no interest in exposing Hudson’s homosexuality during his lifetime.
“To have exposed his other life would have been vicious and vindictive,” she said. “I faced enough trouble rebuilding my life without burying that guilt.”
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