Hudson Feared Discovery by Nancy Reagan

A former bartender who is suing Rock Hudson’s estate testified Wednesday that the actor once refused to take him to a state dinner at the White House because he was afraid First Lady Nancy Reagan would realize he was homosexual.

“He said that Nancy Reagan would figure out our relationship because she was a very bright woman and he was embarrassed,” Marc Christian said under cross-examination by Robert Parker Mills, an attorney for Hudson’s estate.

Christian, in his third day on the stand in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial, said he had sex with Hudson about 160 times between June, 1984, when Hudson learned he had AIDS, and February, 1985, when Christian said he learned of the actor’s illness from a television newscast.

Question Asked

Asked by Mills if he would have stopped having sex with Hudson if he had known the actor had AIDS, Christian answered, “Yes.”

Christian is suing Hudson’s estate, two doctors and Mark Miller, the actor’s personal secretary, for $14 million, charging that they conspired to conceal that Hudson had acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

In a countersuit, estate attorneys claim that Christian was a prostitute who blackmailed the former leading man by threatening to expose Hudson’s homosexuality.

Hudson died in 1985 of complications from AIDS at the age of 59.

Christian has tested negative for the AIDS virus, but under questioning from Mills he noted, “There is no test to tell if AIDS is dormant. If there were, there’d be a lot of relieved people.”

The testimony was marked by sharp exchanges between Mills and Christian’s attorney, Harold Rhoden, centering on the admissibility of various depositions in the case.

At one point, after Mills had taken a document from Rhoden to show Christian, Rhoden exploded: “Counsel, you grab something from me gently or don’t grab it at all. Don’t grab anything from me again.”

Superior Court Judge Bruce Geernaert also admonished Mills and Miller for “snickering” during Christian’s testimony. The admonishment came after Christian, contradicting testimony he gave last week, said one of his sexual encounters with Hudson was witnessed by a friend.

Earlier Testimony

Christian said the friend accidentally saw Christian and Hudson having sex and volunteered the information after his earlier testimony.

“I asked him what he saw, and he said, ‘You weren’t playing Scrabble,’ ” Christian said.

Christian, who met Hudson in 1982 at a fund-raiser for senatorial candidate and author Gore Vidal, has testified that he had sex with Hudson three to five times a week.

He contends that because news of Hudson’s illness was kept from him, his chances of being infected by the actor were greatly increased.