Roberts saw the importance, from the beginning, of supporting the LGBT community. By the time Roberts bought the bar, more people knew the Hollywood leading man was gay. When the bar was originally named, Hudson’s sexual orientation was hush-hush.
The original owners, a couple of Braniff pilots, told Roberts the bar’s name came from a line in a Doris Day-Rock Hudson film in which Hudson tells Day he’s going to stop in at the Hidden Door, the bar in the hotel where they’re staying. The bar already had been around at least a decade when Roberts bought it.
Roberts kept the name and turned it into a gay bar. When Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was introduced to then-Hidden Door President Tony Bobrow, Jones told him he “got a lot of pussy there.” But Jones’ experiences at the Hidden Door happened before Jim Roberts bought the bar in 1979, when it was still a straight bar frequented by airline employees coming over from Love Field.
