There were many male stars in movie magazines in shirtless pictures... okay, I confess I might have lingered on some of those a little longer, but the actor I remember seeing in this state of undress more than any other was Nader. The captions often read brawny and handsome. I thought they nailed it. So often did I see him on those pages that by the time I first saw him in a movie, I already knew who he was.
He was a California guy through and through. He always lived in the Golden State except for a stay of a few years in Europe. He enjoyed a few more comforts than some, perhaps, with parents who had a comfortable life in Pasadena. Nader was always told he was good-looking and once he added working out as a daily regimen, the compliments came faster.
What he always understood from an early age was that he was gay. He excelled at sports and had an active social life. He dated girls. If he ever once considered marrying a woman, the idea must have passed quickly. He was frequently asked when he was going to settle down and get married, and early on he acquired his standard response... probably when I find the right one.
After appearing in high school plays, he knew he wanted to be an actor one day. He would earn himself a degree in theater arts at Occidental College but three years in the Navy would interrupt his planned fame and glory. After the service he returned home and joined the famed Pasadena Playhouse. In 1947 at the Playhouse, Nader met Mark Miller, who had some acting aspirations of his own in those days, and they would embark on a relationship that would last for 55 years. Apparently he found the right one.
His looks primarily got him into a number of films but most amounted to little more than walk-ons and were often uncredited. Sci-fi buffs may recall him making what has long been called one of the worst movies ever made. Robot Monster (1953) was an early 3D cheapie where Nader battled the dreaded Ro-man, which looked like a gorilla in a space helmet. Let's not speak of it again.
The first film I saw him in was Carnival Story (1954), a little indie about a rundown German circus with Anne Baxter as a diving performer married to Lyle Bettger, cheating with Steve Cochran and loved by Nader. I liked it and it was a kick seeing (and hearing!) him in a movie.
By the end of 1954 he had attracted the attention of Universal-International and they put him under contract, a move not at all surprising. While I always felt Nader was talented, that's not why he was hired. The studio loved handsome and hunky and Nader fit in well with Tony Curtis, Jeff Chandler and Rock Hudson and a host of lesser satellites, all doing their best to hit the big time.
With Hudson, however, it was a little more. They bonded early on based on it-takes-one-to-know-one. One of them once said that they became such good friends so quickly that they never did become lovers. Besides, Nader was in a monogamous relationship with Miller. What they did all become was life-long friends, even neighbors for many years, and for 15 years or so, Miller was Hudson's secretary. The couple would receive a huge chunk of Hudson's estate when he died.
After a couple of dull films, Nader made Six Bridges to Cross (1955) with Curtis and Julie Adams. Nader played a sympathetic cop (more than once he would play a good-guy second lead) to Curtis' budding thug. The kudos Nader received for the film were very reassuring. Could this be the break he so wanted? It might have been better if he'd been the lead but he remained hopeful. This was the first of three films in which he and Adams would play love interests. Curtis, by the way, was nice enough to publicly say that Nader was one of the kindest and most generous men I've ever known.
Around this time something happened in Hollywood that had Rock Hudson at the center. It was said that Confidential Magazine, the most salacious gossip rag of the day, was going to out Hudson in an upcoming edition and it alerted Universal Studios to that fact. Then there are two versions on what happened next. One is that the studio, not about to damage the appeal or the financial value of their number one male star, made a deal. They would serve up Nader to be outed instead... the magazine could slice and dice him however it wanted, some hush money would exchange hands and Hudson would be off the hook.
The second version is that super gay agent Henry Willson, who had both Hudson and Rory Calhoun under contract, offered Confidential a true but largely unknown story that Calhoun had done a prison stretch. If Calhoun's career went in the toilet, so what? Save Hudson, save Hudson.
Over the years many have been adamant that it is the Calhoun story, not the Nader one, that was true. I will agree that one hears more about the Calhoun story. But I remember Hollywood gossip that Nader was the sacrificial lamb and I remember it very well. Let's not forget I was already pretty stoked on Nader and had become aware of him before I ever saw him on the screen. Some 12 years later I worked at Universal and asked my gay boss about it. He said that Nader was asked to take the fall and for his great friend he agreed.
It goes on. I can't say as I ever recall seeing a story in the magazine that outed Nader but I do recall a story about Calhoun being in the joint. Interesting, it didn't affect Calhoun's career much at all. If anyone's career stagnated, it was certainly Nader's.
He didn't always paddle a smooth stream on his voyage through Hollywood, although he certainly tried. He was just a take-it-nice-and-easy sort of guy. He and Hudson started at Universal around the same time but it was patently clear whose career was skyrocketing and whose wasn't. He realized the studio wasn't really going to bat for any of its male players because it all went to Hudson. And of course, there was always the gay issue. He later said of that time... we lived in fear of an exposé, or even one small remark, a veiled suggestion that someone was homosexual. Such a remark would have caused an earthquake at the studio. Every month, when Confidential Magazine came out, our stomachs would turn. Which of us would it be?
Much has been made of the closeness among Hudson, Nader and Miller. As said, Miller went to work for Hudson who, in turn, seemed to care for and about the two men all their lives. Was it a little bit of payback?
I think there is one other avenue worth exploring and that is that perhaps both versions are true. Maybe both Nader and Calhoun were offered up... maybe it took two of them to equal one Rock Hudson. I'm jus' sayin'.
What is not much in doubt, however, is that Universal was having an unpleasant time dodging the gossip and the questions and the innuendos about the sex lives of a few of its handsomest male stars. Hudson and Nader were ordered to find a woman to marry. Hudson did just that. He married Henry Willson's lesbian secretary. Nader said not a chance. He was humiliated enough going on studio-arranged dates with starlets but he wasn't marrying anyone and besides, he was in a committed relationship. Universal was not amused.
No matter how it was sliced, the studio's interest in Nader waned. He was a damned nice guy, everyone knew that, but obedience edges out nice guy. With his sonorous voice, handsome face and hunky frame, he became the love interest to three actresses whose careers were also losing some luster... Jeanne Crain, Maureen O'Hara and Virginia Mayo... in three programmers, The Second Greatest Sex (1955), Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) and Congo Crossing (1956), respectively.
Nader kept a low profile in Hollywood and even lower in gay Hollywood. He and Miller gave some parties and went to a few but basically they were stay-at-home types, totally devoted to one another, and when they needed a little zip in their lives, they called their pal Rock. They got a fourth for bridge, traveled together and leaned on one another. Nader knew his career had stalled and that he was employed as the resident hunk. His work pal Jeff Chandler felt the same but he worked more often.
And then oddly, for the remainder of his time at Universal, he got some decent assignments. Had someone forgotten that he was being punished? One of his best movies is the war drama,
Away All Boats (1956), co-starring Chandler, Adams (again as Nader's wife) and a bevy of beefcake beaux including Lex Barker, Keith Andes, William Reynolds and Jock Mahoney. It concerned the men aboard an attack transport in the Pacific who see plenty of (Universal-colorful) action and endure a war aboard ship between the captain (Chandler) and his next in command (Nader).
The Unguarded Moment (1956) was most talked-about at the time for being Esther Williams' first dramatic role after drying off from all that swimming. The focus was clearly on her as a teacher who is being stalked by a student (John Saxon) and Nader is a cop looking after her.
Four Girls in Town (1957) is better than the silly title might suggest. Four starlets are testing for one role in some epic a studio is about to start filming. Nader is the film's director who's looking over Adams (for the third and final time), Marianne Cook, Elsa Martinelli and Gia Scala. John Gavin and Grant Williams help with the overall allure as each woman's personal story is revealed.
Man Afraid (1957) is a tidy little film noir in which a married minister is stalked by the father of a man killed by the minister as he was robbing his home. Nader turned in his usual competent performance as did Phyllis Thaxter as his wife but unfortunately the film didn't get the attention it deserved.
Nader gets a chance to tear it up in the 1957 noir Appointment with a Shadow playing a washed-up, alcoholic reporter who gets an unusual chance at a comeback. If Universal had tried to sell it, it might have been one more chance for him to get the acclaim he deserved.
Not only did they not do that, they stuck him in the truly atrocious The Female Animal (1958). Try to imagine Hedy Lamarr as the mother of Jane Powell for starters. Then know that both compete for Nader's attention. Powell shamelessly overacts in her first dramatic role and Nader is wooden. Had he quit caring? Whatever, it would be his last American film. It would also be Lamarr's final film and one of Powell's last.
Nader got an offer from the Brits to join Maggie Smith in her first starring role in the noir (English-style), Nowhere to Go (1958). It opens with Nader's prison break (in total silence) and while he hides inside for a spell, the film flashes back to why he's there in the first place. The story is full of delicious treachery and Nader does a fine job as a sociopath, a rare type of role for him. He and Smith became good friends and stayed in touch the rest of his life.
He made no movies from 1958 to 1962, instead concentrating on television (a sure sign the movie career wasn't going so well), including starring in two short-lived series... The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen and The Man and the Challenge.
After the last series ended, Nader made European films, most of them cheesy. If any played in the States I am unaware of it. Apparently in Germany he rose to the star status he had sought at home by signing him to play Jerry Cotton, a James Bond-like spy-lothario, in eight movies. We can be assured that when he wasn't dazzling in a suit and tie, he was pretty impressive in next-to-nothing.
Nader and Miller returned to California in the early 1970s but the actor worked very little. In 1974 he sustained a serious eye injury in an automobile accident which left him ultra-sensitive to the bright lights on movie sound stages and he never acted again.
While still not out of the closet in 1978, it fascinates me that Nader had no problem writing a homoerotic, sci-fi book called Chrome. It's about the love affair between a young space cadet and a beautiful male robot. At the time of Nader's death, it had enjoyed some six or more printings.
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| The BFFs shortly before Hudson became ill |
When Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS in June, 1984, Nader and Miller were among the very few who were told. Hudson would come to count on them more than ever. Both men were bereft when Hudson passed away in October, 1985. One rarely heard about Nader after he left the movies but his name did pop up now and then as the press leaned in to cover Hudson's last months. And of course Nader's name appears in any number of books written about Hudson after his passing. In 1986 Nader finally came out. It was rather anti-climactic at that point, although good for him.
Nader and Miller moved to Palm Springs where they lived quietly for a number of years. In the early 2000s Nader got a bacterial infection somewhere around a trip to Hawaii and had medical issues for the rest of his life. He died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills of cardiac pulmonary failure, pneumonia and several cerebral infarctions in 2002. George Nader was 80 years old.
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An occasional movie actress
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