snopes.com: Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson Marriage

Claim: Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson were married to each other.

Status: False.

Origins: Sometimes the most ridiculous slanders are the ones that prove the longest-lived. That is certainly the case with the rumored Nabors-Hudson union, a fabrication that has been part of popular lore since the early 1970s.

Unlike many bits of celebrity gossip, this tale began as a good-natured leg-pull, an unthinking bit of silliness intended neither to be mistaken for fact nor to target the persons named in the rumor. No one, it appears, was looking to harm either Hudson or Nabors; this was an instance of playful exuberance taken as dead seriousness.

As Rock Hudson reported about the tale's origins:

There appears to be a couple of elderly, or middle-aged homosexuals who live in Huntington Beach, which is just down the coast from Los Angeles, who every year give a party, a big party, 500 people or so. And they invite everyone they know. It's an engraved invitation, and to make it amusing they will say, 'You're cordially invited to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in Huntington Beach.' One year the invitation was, 'You are cordially invited to the wedding reception of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors.' And it went all over the country.

Go all over the country it did. A fan magazine picked up on the invites and ran an item — naming no names — alluding to the wedding of two same-sex stars. Other gossip-mongers spread the word, including a Chicago disk jockey who described the participants as "sort of the rock of Hollywood'' and "a plain guy . . . just neighbors.''

That the joke should have explained itself escaped notice — very few picked up on the idea that hunky Mr. Hudson would hereinafter be known as "Rock Pyle," once again proving the adage no joke is so obvious that some won't get it.

Hudson maintained that the prank destroyed his friendship with Nabors. "We can't be seen together," he said.

Which indeed they couldn't, lest they add substance to the rumor.

News

that Rock Hudson was a homosexual long ago fell into the province of common knowledge, but at the time of the Nabors-Hudson marriage rumor Hudson's public acknowledgement of his homosexuality was still fifteen years away. Hudson's short-lived 1955 marriage to secretary Phyllis Gates (which insiders claimed had been arranged by his studio) and other carefully managed publicity efforts were largely successful in deflecting gossip about Hudson's sexual preferences until the terminally ill actor shattered his lifetime secret by announcing he was dying of AIDS. At that time the media were for the most part ignoring AIDS, viewing the scourge as a phenomenon limited in scope, unnewsworthy, and of no real interest to the public at large. Hudson's public suffering was a watershed event in the history of the fight against AIDS — overnight the disease suddenly shifted from being an illness some nameless folks occasionally contracted to something that was visibly sapping the life of a beloved movie star.

Athough Hudson's sexual orientation was known among friends and co-workers, the news of it had yet to reach the average person prior to his final days in 1985. Hudson conducted his private life quietly, always terrified he would be outed as gay, an event he thought would spell the end to his career as a popular leading man. At the time the Nabors "marriage" rumor was floated, he was just beginning what would prove to be a highly successful run in McMillan and Wife, a series of made-for-TV movies. The character of Commissioner McMillan couldn't very well be gay, and neither could the actor charged with playing the role.

Jim Nabors

also had his reasons for being horrified by the rumor, primarily that he wanted to be taken seriously, and any funny story that poked fun at him worked to undermine his screen credibility. Having made his living in the entertainment industry playing the bumpkin, Nabors was handicapped by a negative and less-than-adult image. His chief claim to fame was as Gomer Pyle, a role originated on The Andy Griffith Show and spun off to its own series, Gomer Pyle, USMC. Pyle was a bumbler, a "gosh, golly, gee" farm boy possessed of all the best intentions yet fated to pave the road to hell with them. Thanks to the blurring of the actor with the role, Nabors' success doomed him to being typecast as folks proved unable to picture him in anything but a Gomer Pyle-type role.

At the time the rumor about being wed to Hudson surfaced, Nabors was busily engaged in a project that if it didn't exactly break his "golly gee" image, at least stretched its boundaries. In the early 1970s he hosted The Jim Nabors Show, a morning talk show along the lines of the highly successful Dinah Shore Show. (The Jim Nabors Show should not be confused with the similarly-titled The Jim Nabors Hour, a television variety show that ran in 1969-71). The talk show didn't make it, and it would be 1975 before Nabors had another show of his own.

Did the mental image of a bridal-gowned Jim Nabors hinder his career? Well, put it this way: it couldn't have helped. Neither did similarly titillating thoughts help Hudson, who was then battling to keep his orientation quiet, lest the truth about his preferences wipe out his career.

Barbara "pillow talk of the town" Mikkelson

Last updated: 10 August 2007

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Sources:

Schaer, Sidney. "The Star Who Became a Symbol: Part II.": Newsday. 3 October 1985 (p. 2).
The San Diego Union-Tribune. "Today's People.": 21 August 1985 (p. A2).
The Seattle Times. "Postscripts.": 21 August 1985 (p. A3).