Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
July 22, 1965
Till Death Us Do Part debuted on England’s
BBC-TV.
Till Death Us Do Part is a British
television sitcom that
aired on BBC1 from
1965 to 1975. First airing as
a Comedy Playhouse pilot,
the show aired in seven series until 1975. Six years later, ITV continued
the sitcom, calling it Till
Death.... From 1985 to 1992, the BBC produced a sequel In Sickness and in Health.
Created by Johnny
Speight, Till Death Us Do Part centred on the East End Garnett family, led by patriarch Alf Garnett (Warren
Mitchell), a reactionarywhite working-class man who holds racist and
anti-socialist views. His long-suffering wife Else was played by Dandy
Nichols, and his daughter Rita by Una Stubbs.
Rita's husband Mike Rawlins (Anthony Booth) is a socialist layabout. The character
Alf Garnett became a well known character in British culture, and Mitchell played
him on stage and television up until 1998, when Speight died.
In addition to the spin-off In
Sickness and in Health, Till Death Us Do Part was re-made
in many countries including Brazil, Germany (Ein Herz und eine Seele), the
Netherlands (In Voor- En Tegenspoed), and the United States (All
in the Family).
Many episodes from the first three
series are thought to no longer exist, having been wiped in the
late 1960s and early '70s as was the policy at the time.
July 25, 1985
Rock Hudson announces he has AIDS.
Rock Hudson, a quintessential tall, dark and handsome
Hollywood leading man of the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 60 films during
his career, announces through a press release that he is suffering from
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). With that announcement, Hudson
became the first major celebrity to go public with such a diagnosis. The first
cases of AIDS, a condition of the human immune system, were reported in
homosexual men in the United States in the early 1980s. At the time of Hudson’s
death, AIDS was not fully understood by the medical community and the disease
was stigmatized by the general public as a condition affecting only gay men,
intravenous drug users and people who received contaminated blood transfusions.
Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka,
Illinois. He rose to fame in the 1950s, starring in such films as Giant (1956),
for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and A Farewell to
Arms (1957). Hudson’s good looks and charm were on display in 1959’s Pillow
Talk and several other romantic comedies he made with Doris Day in the
early 1960s. In the 1970s, Hudson co-starred in the popular TV series McMillan
and Wife. In the early 1980s, he began experiencing health problems and
underwent heart bypass surgery. His final TV role was a recurring part on Dynasty
from 1984 to 1985.
In July 1985 Hudson was hospitalized while in Paris. Some media reports
indicated he was suffering from liver cancer. However, on July 25, Hudson
issued a press release stating he had AIDS and was in France for treatment.
Hudson, who had a three-year marriage during the 1950s to a woman who had been
his agent’s secretary, was believed to be gay, although he never spoke publicly
about his sexuality.
Hudson died on October 2, 1985, at age 59 in Beverly
Hills, California. His death was credited with bringing attention to an
epidemic that went on to kill millions of men, women and children of all
backgrounds from around the world. Hudson’s friend and former Giant co-star
Elizabeth Taylor became an AIDS activist and rallied the Hollywood community to
raise millions for research. In 1993, Tom Hanks received a Best Actor Oscar for
his performance in director Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, the first
major Hollywood movie to focus on AIDS.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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