Renowned casting director Joel Thurm claims he had sexual encounters with movie icon Rock Hudson and The Brady Bunch’s Robert Reed.
Thurm — who is known for his casting decisions in films like Grease and television shows like The Golden Girls — describes in his new memoir, ‘Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director,’ how he got on with the two stars.
The now 80-year-old told Page Six how he was ultimately unsuccessful in his encounter with Hudson at a 1970s sex party, but the Pillow Talk star was understanding about the situation.
He was more successful, he said, when he tried to calm down Reed on the set of a John Travolta made-for-TV film.
Joel Thurm, now 80, claims he once had sexual encounters with Rock Hudson and Robert Reed
He describes the encounters in his new memoir, Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director
Thurm told how he attended an industry party in the 1970s, in which most of the attendees were secretly gay.
They had gathered to watch one of his first full-length gay porn flicks called Boys in the Sand, when he said his childhood crush Rock Hudson, beckoned him to follow him into a bedroom.
But once they were alone, Thurm said he ‘couldn’t get it up’ for Hudson.
‘I was embarrassed and mortified, getting it up was a specialty of mine,’ the legendary casting director told Page Six.
‘I couldn’t do it because he was Rock Hudson! It so intimidated me.
‘Someone said, “Well, why didn’t you just blow him?” I said, “Because I was too… I couldn’t do anything.’
Fortunately, Thurm said the star — who died of AIDS in 1985 — was understanding of the failed sexual encounter because ‘it had happened to him before.’
Thurm said he was at an industry party in the 1970s with many gay men when Rock Hudson (pictured in 1951) beckoned him to follow him to a bedroom
Thurm said that Hudson (pictured in 1975) was very understanding when he ‘couldn’t get it up’
Thurm would have more success years later when he was trying to comfort Robert Reed on the set of his 1976 television movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
Reed is best known for his role as the father Mike Brady, opposite Florence Henderson’s role as Carol Brady, on the ABC television sitcom The Brady Bunch, which aired from 1969 to 1974
Thurm would find more success a few years later when he was casting and producing the 1976 television movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, starring a young John Travolta.
He claims Reed, who co-starred in the film, was annoyed he was not the lead, and was particularly upset that he had to have his hair curled and then uncurled in one day.
Thurm said he went to Reed’s dressing room to help calm him down.
‘It was known [that Reed was gay],’ Thurm said. ‘But I didn’t go in there with the intention of that.
‘I went in there with the intention of just [saying], “Hey thank you for putting up with what we have to do.”
‘And then, I don’t know, I just started rubbing his back. I thought, “Well that’s what you do in a situation like that.”
‘I had no intention of anything more than that,’ Thurm claims. ‘But he seemed to respond.’
After the encounter, though, Thurm said, Reed ‘went back to being the same little p***k he was before.’
Reed would die in 1992 at the age of 59 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. It was later revealed he was HIV-positive.