‘Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed’ Review: Doc Twists Classic Clips to Illuminate Closeted Star’s Private Life

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic During his lifetime, Rock Hudson was a model for American masculinity. That changed after his death, when the strapping, straight-acting (but occasionally sensitive) hunk from Winnetka became the poster boy for Hollywood homophobia: a closeted star who’d been forced to play a role his entire career that wasn’t true to himself, on screen and off. “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” treats that compromise as a tragedy, leaning on the fact Hudson died of AIDS to underscore the injustice, but Stephen Kijak’s documentary does him a disservice, reducing Hudson’s career — in exactly the way he went so far out of his way to avoid — to the dimension of his sexuality.

Built around interviews with a handful of former lovers and friends, Kijak spills private details from Hudson’s personal life, ranging from whom he shagged to how he arranged such trysts in the first place.

A secretly recorded phone call reveals Hudson to be a “size queen,” audibly excited by the prospect of meeting a tall, well-endowed stranger.

The whopper — which underscores the kind of salacious gossip Kijak gravitates toward in the film — comes from Joe Carberry, who recalls, “Rock had a sizable dick, but he tried to put that thing up my ass, and I couldn’t do it.” At a time when the average American would be hard-pressed to name a single Rock Hudson film, is this what audiences really need to know about the star?