In the multitude of misused Hollywood women, Phyllis Gates, who has died aged 80, must rank among the saddest. She never made a film, or even auditioned for one. But she married Rock Hudson, one of the movie industry's biggest stars.
Unknown to Gates, their union, in 1955, was fixed. She always said the marriage was for love but - like most of the world - she did not know the truth about her husband: that he was gay and risked possible exposure in a scandal magazine. The pair divorced after less than three years, and his career continued in films and on television. He died of Aids in 1985, aged 59; the disclosure of his illness was the first involving a celebrity and served to educate the public about the disease.
Gates, an intensely attractive, dark-haired woman, was a naive farm girl from Minnesota who had landed a secretarial job with a New York entertainment corporation. This sparked an interest in show business, and she moved to Los Angeles, taking a job with the Hollywood agent Henry Willson. He not only represented Hudson, but had invented his name, as well as those of fellow actors Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter. Willson, who was also gay, knew that rumours about Hudson could ruin his best client, who had just won a leading role with the young James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant (1956).
Willson was particularly worried about the sensational magazine Confidential, which had spoken to some of Hudson's former lovers. Accordingly, he contrived for Gates and Hudson to date each other after they had met in his office. Then, in October 1955, a Life magazine article on "Hollywood's most handsome bachelor" reported: "Fans are urging 29-year-old Hudson to get married - or explain why not." Willson had to move, quickly.
Hudson proposed to Gates in Willson's office, and she accepted at once. The following month, the agent organised a private wedding in nearby Santa Barbara, adding a Lutheran minister only at Gates's last-minute insistence. Before the couple reached Florida for a Jamaican honeymoon that Willson had also set up, he was on the phone with the news to Hollywood's two top gossip columnists. No Hudson disclosure appeared in Confidential.
At first the marriage went well, Gates wrote in her 1986 book, My Husband, Rock Hudson. He was generous with gifts, particularly jewellery, and they had a sex life, although it was usually "brief and hurried". But Hudson began to go out a lot, even late at night, offering only lame excuses.
There were calls from young men, but Gates thought they were fans. Then, in an argument, he told her that "all women are dirty" and, during sudden rages, he hit her. She went to see a psychiatrist who, after interviewing Hudson, warned her that he might be homosexual. While in Italy making A Farewell to Arms (1957), he "virtually abandoned" her for five months. She sued for divorce the following April, received $250 a week for 10 years and never spoke to Hudson again.
She remained in LA and became an interior designer, but never remarried.
· Phyllis Lucille Gates, Hollywood wife, born December 7 1925; died January 4 2006