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Mamie Van Doren never misses a chance to kiss and tell.
The star, now 94, will be honored with the Legacy Award at the annual Cincecon Film Festival and present a screening of her 1959 film, “Guns, Girls and Gangsters.” Fox News Digital learned she’s filming a new documentary about her life and has a book coming out later this year.
Before Van Doren became a Hollywood sex symbol, Universal Studios set up several dates for her with other movie stars to boost her career.
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Publicity portrait of Mamie Van Doren, circa 1957. (John Kisch Archive/Getty Images)
One of her arranged dates was with Rock Hudson.
“With Rock Hudson, they said he was gay at the studio. . . . ‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’” she recently told IndieWire. “But that’s not true. That’s not true at all.”
“He came on to me,” she claimed. “And in my book, I told about having [on] a Crimmins skirt and him getting very passionate and rolling on the kitchen floor.”
Rock Hudson, circa 1955. (Screen Archives/Getty Images)
Hudson, a box office titan, died in 1985 from complications of AIDS. He was 59. When his AIDS diagnosis became public a few months before his death, friends and colleagues revealed that he was gay, People magazine reported. The outlet noted this was an open secret in most Hollywood circles.
“We all knew Rock was gay, but it never made any difference to us,” Van Doren told the outlet in a 1985 cover story about Hudson.
Bob Preble and Rock Hudson talking to a woman outside the North Hollywood home they shared, circa 1952. (Moviepix/Getty Images)
“Universal invested a lot of money in Rock, and it was important for his image to remain that of a ladykiller. Rock did what was expected of him.”
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Rock Hudson and Mamie Van Doren were unknown movie hopefuls when this photo was taken. (Getty Images)
Van Doren went on to write about her encounter with Hudson in her 1987 memoir, “Playing the Field: My Story.”
Van Doren told IndieWire that one actor she didn’t want to get involved with was Gig Young, her co-star in 1958’s “Teacher’s Pet.”
“I had a problem with that one,” she explained. “I was very on the outs with my husband at that time, but we were still together, and I didn’t have any kind of relationship with him then, but I realized that he liked me.”
Rock Hudson in 1985. The actor died in October of that year at age 59. (Images Press/Getty Images)
“Merv Griffin had a show coming out of Las Vegas,” said Van Doren. “[Young] was on the show, and I was on the show. Well, he was there, and he wanted to take me out. And I didn’t want to go out with him. There was something about him that I didn’t particularly care for. I have a sense that’s really good. I have a really good nose for horse flesh, that’s for sure. And I refused to go out with him.”
“He got very upset and very mad at me. And then I heard later that he [had] married somebody, and he shot her.”
In 1978, Young fatally shot his wife Kim Schmidt before taking his own life. He was 64.
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Gig Young and his wife Kim attend the grand opening of David Hamilton Gallery on December 6, 1977, in Los Angeles, California. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Van Doren has been married five times. She had a son with band leader Ray Anthony in 1956.
“I found myself pregnant, and I got married afterward … that was unheard of,” she told the outlet. “At least it got me out of my contract at Universal.”
Van Doren is grateful for the life that she’s lived, pointing out that her contemporaries had met untimely ends. Marilyn Monroe passed away in 1962 from a barbiturate overdose. She was 36. Jayne Mansfield was instantly killed in a 1967 car crash. She was 34.
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“I’ve got a couple of wonderful angels on my shoulder,” Van Doren told the outlet. I really believe that, and I have a connection with God. And everything I do, there’s a reason why I do it. It’s to help and be kind to people. I’ve tried to be kind to people even when they weren’t kind to me. And if I’m around someone very bad, I try to just get away from it. I don’t like to be around bad things.”
Mamie Van Doren was married to bandleader Ray Anthony from 1955 to 1961. (Getty Images)
Back in 2020, Van Doren told Fox News Digital that at first, she had no inkling that Hudson was gay.
“I was only under contract for two weeks when the publicity department called me and said I was going on a date with Rock Hudson,” she said at the time.
“And I was just so worried. The girl casually said, ‘You don’t have to worry about him – he doesn’t go for girls.’ So we went out. . . . We became great friends. I remember him being really down to earth and just a nice guy. So, when he became sick, it was very devastating.”
Mamie Van Doren in publicity portrait for the film “The Second Greatest Sex,” circa 1955. (Universal-International/Getty Images)
After skyrocketing to fame, Van Doren was ready to leave Hollywood.
“I moved out here to Newport Beach simply because I didn’t like it in Hollywood,” she said. “Your life is too much of an open book up there. So, I got away … I got away from all the bad stuff that was going on. This was around the ‘60s when I left. There were a lot of drugs. Marilyn died. Jayne died. A lot of my contemporaries were gone. I just thought it was time to leave Hollywood. It just wasn’t agreeing with me.”
Mamie Van Doren attends The Hollywood Show held at Westin LAX Hotel on April 20, 2013, in Los Angeles, California. (Albert L. Ortega/WireImage/Getty Images)
“And I had a son,” she said. “I wanted to give him a better life than Hollywood. And he got interested in boats. I took a different turn and a different lifestyle from what I was used to. I kept some of my friends. I didn’t have that many friends in Hollywood to begin with. I shy away from going to parties so much. I had stacks of invitations, and I just never used them.”
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Mamie Van Doren is shown here for the first time with her son, Perry Ray Anthony. The actress was on leave of absence from her studio. (Getty Images)
Still, the screen siren said she’s proud to be recognized as a sex symbol.
“Well, being sexy is nice,” she said. “I like being sexy. Hell, I like sex. I like it better than rock ‘n’ roll. I was the first to do rock ‘n’ roll on the big screen, and that definitely exudes a lot of your sex appeal. It comes from within. You can’t learn rock ‘n’ roll. You have to be born with it. It’s gotta be natural.”
Actress Mamie Van Doren poses at home in Los Angeles, circa 1956. (Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
“I think I was born with it,” she reflected. “I certainly opened a lot of doors during a postwar time when things were very conservative. I was way ahead of my time … I wasn’t going to be playing nun roles, that’s for sure.”