An ailing and skeletal shadow of the movie star who had for decades hidden his homosexuality from his adoring public, announced he was battling the terrifying virus just two months before it took his life at the age of 59.
"I can at least know my own misfortune has had positive worth," Hudson said on his deathbed, shortly before the disease overcame him on October 2, 1985.
The shocking announcement on July 25, just two months and 10 days before his death, changed the public perception of the disease forever by putting a familiar face to AIDS.
"He was the first person worldwide and in the US that the average American citizen could identify as someone who had AIDS," Craig Thompson, executive director, AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), told AFP.
Or as E-Online put it:
"Until then, in the minds of the mainstream, AIDS was still the province of sodomites, Haitians, junkies and other marginalized people, not upstanding Americans like movie stars."
Hudson, who was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois in 1925, made his movie debut in 1948’s "Fighter Squadron" and rose quickly to become one of Hollywood’s most sought after actors.
In the 1950s and 60s he starred in a string of romantic comedy’s with Doris Day and became an iconic heartthrob.
His most memorable role was opposite his friend Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean in the epic 1956 film "Giant."
But his homosexuality remained a tightly-guarded secret.
"In those times, if it was known that he was homosexual, it would have ruined his career," said Hudson’s friend, famed US newspaper columnist Liz Smith.
Studio chiefs rallied and arranged for him to marry studio secretary Phyllis Gates in 1955.
For three decades, Hudson made women swoon by maintaining a carefully-crafted public image.
Until he revealed he had AIDS, that is.
The announcement, made by his publicist while he was receiving experimental treatment in Paris, came at a great personal price for a man who had spent his life maintaining his screen persona as it also revealed his true sexuality.
"I hope I die of a heart attack before they find out," Hudson said when he was diagnosed.
At the time, just 12,000 people, mostly gay men in San Francisco and New York, had been diagnosed with the disease that would become a global pandemic, and little was known it.
"You’d go to parties, and people would have really negative things to say about how afraid they were of getting AIDS from shaking hands with somebody," Liz Smith told AFP.
"I mean, people were just ignorant," she said.
But Hudson’s admission would help shatter misconceptions about the disease and helped portray sufferers as victims and not as plague spreaders.
But the immediate reaction to the announcement was far from positive. In late 1984, Hudson had guest starred in the hit US television series "Dynasty," passionately embracing co-star Linda Evans in one episode.
The announcement that he had AIDS sent the world’s press into a frenzy over whether Evans could have been infected with the deadly virus.
"This kiss with Linda Evans: The transmission by saliva was debated and continues to be debated all the way up to this day. I don’t think the people’s reaction was necessarily overreaction," Thompson said.
Evans was one of the few people at the time who was not angry at Hudson, saying he held back during the passionate scene for fear of infecting her.
But the cast and crew were alarmed Hudson’s physical decline and his sudden inability to remember his lines.
After his treatment in France, Hudson flew back to California to die. "It was shocking and horrible," Liz Smith recalled.
But while his death marked a huge loss for cinema and Hudson’s friends, it warned the world of the looming danger AIDS posed the world.
"He was so beloved," said the APLA’s Thompson. He was one of those people behind the scenes that Hollywood genuinely liked," he said explaining that Hudson’s death spurred celebrities and governments into joining the fight against AIDS.
Elizabeth Taylor, who devoted most of the last two decades to the AIDS crusade, summed up Hudson’s contribution to the fight shortly after her friend’s death: "Please God, he has not died in vain."
