American talent agent Henry Willson was BOTD in 1911. Born in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania to a prominent middle-class family, he was raised in New York, where his father was president of the Columbia Photograph Company. As a child, he grew up surrounded by his father’s celebrity friends, including Broadway stars Fanny Brice, Will Rogers and Fred Stone. Concerned by young Henry’s love of tap-dancing, his father sent him to a Spartan school in North Carolina, hoping that weekend rock-climbing would cure his effeminacy. Undeterred, Willson flamed his way to Wesleyan University, spending weekends in New York City where he wrote gossip columns for Variety magazine. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, where he worked for gossip magazine Photoplay. He became a talent agent, living in a lavish Beverly Hills mansion purchased by his father, and regularly cruised gay bars in Hollywood, picking up and seducing twinks with promises of film stardom. After nurturing the career of the young Lana Turner, he worked for producer David O. Selznick as head of talent for Vanguard Pictures. He became responsible for the “beefcake craze” of 1950s Hollywood, grooming (in more ways than one) a coterie of young male stars including Guy Madison, Craig Stevens, John Derek, Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter, whose clean-cut good looks often transcended their acting ability. His most famous client was a Mid-Western truck driver named Roy Scherer, whom he renamed Rock Hudson and transformed into a robustly masculine leading man, even encouraging Hudson to marry a woman as a cover for his homosexuality. In 1955, Willson intervened to stop Confidential magazine from revealing Hudson’s secret gay life, offering up details about Calhoun’s criminal record and Hunter’s arrest at a gay sex party in exchange. With his career effectively destroyed, Hunter left Hollywood, claiming decades later that Willson’s betrayal was punishment for Hunter refusing his sexual advances. Willson’s career declined by the 1970s, as he struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. As his homosexuality became widely known, many of his clients distanced themselves from him. Unemployable and destitute, he moved into a hospital for retired Hollywood players, dying in 1978, aged 67. His tombstone in Valhalla Memorial Park in Hollywood reads “Star – Star Maker”. In his 2005 book The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, biographer Robert Hofler revealed Willson’s history of coercing his male clients into sex in exchange for career advancement. He was played by Jim Parsons in Ryan Murphy’s 2020 TV drama series Hollywood, dramatising his predatory behaviour and moulding of Hudson’s career.