Background
Hudson, Rock was born on November 17, 1925 in Winnetka, Illinois, United States.
Hudson, Rock was born on November 17, 1925 in Winnetka, Illinois, United States.
Honorary Doctor Arts, Marrietta (Ohio) College, 1957. Educated high school, Winnetka.
Although he made his debut at Warners, in Raoul Walshs Fighter Squadron (48), he was really the product of Universal. He began with bit parts and supports: Undertow (49, William Castle); an Indian in Mann’s Winchester 73 (50); The Desert Hawk (50, Frederick de Cordova); Fregonese’s One Way Street (50); in 1951—Air Cadet and Iron Man for Joseph Pevney and Bright Victory for Mark Robson. He grew into longer parts in a series of adventure and B pictures. In the space of three years, he worked as often as possible in Hollywood's last great profusion of adventure excitement: 1952—Bend of the River (Mann); Scarlet Angel (Sidney Salkow): Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk); and Horizons West (Budd Boettieher); 1953—Seminole (Boeticher); Sea Devils (Walsh); Back to God’s Country (Pevney); Gun Fury (Walsh); and Bengal Brigade (Laslo Benedek); 1954-55—four films for his perceptive patron, Douglas Sirk: Taza, Son of Cochise; Captain Liglitfoot; Magnificent Obsession; and All That Heaven Allows.
Sirk had seen that, despite so many escapades, Hudson was innately gentle and sympathetic. Thus he began a new career as a sustaining figure in women’s pictures. He surprised many people with his quiet authority in George Stevens’s Giant
(56) and worked three more times for Sirk: in Bat¬tle Hymn (57) conventionally, but in Written on the Wind (56) and The Tarnished Angels (57) exceptionally. In the latter, the drunken reporter is one of his better performances and a sign of depths that were never fully explored.
After Richard Brooks's worthy Something of Value (57) and a respectable Frederick Henry in the Selznick-Charles Vidor A Fareicell to Arms (57), he became embroiled with Ross Hunter and usually Doris Day or Gina Lollobrigida in a number of comedies that bridged the gap between gaiety and permissiveness, largely through innuendo. They were uneasy films, but they were very successful, and at last Hudson was proved in comedy: Pillow Talk (59, Michael Gordon); Come September (61, Robert Mulligan); Lover Come Back (61, Delbert Mann); Send Me No Flowers (64, Norman Jewison); Strange Bedfelloivs (65, Panama/ Frank); and A Very Special Favor (65, Gordon). Between times, he made a few offbeat failures: The Last Sunset (61) for Aldrich, The Spiral Road (62) for Mulligan, and A Gathering of Eagles (63) for Delbert Mann. His best comedv by far is Hawks’s Man's Favorite Sport? (64), as memorably beset by Paula Prentiss as ever Grant was bv Hepburn, and admirably clutching at the flawed calm of the angling authority who has never caught a fish.
After that, Hudson made no worthwhile films: he was uneasy as the hero in Frankenheimer’s pretentious Seconds (66); unable to do better than some slack war films and tame comedies: Tobruk (67, Arthur Hiller); John Sturges’s Ice Station Zebra (68); The Undefeated (69, Andrew V. McLaglen) with mustache and John Wayne; the dreadful Darling Lili (69) with Blake Edwards and darling Julie; Phil Karlsons Hornet’s Nest (69); mustachioed and portly in Vadims Pretty Maids All in a Row (71), in which he seemed placidly amused at the chance of grappling with so many naked adolescents. In fact, Vadim neglected the comic potential of Hudson as a cool, campus Bluebeard.
At fifty-five Hudson faced a crisis: without good comedies he might dwindle into such TV series as MacMillan and Wife. The crisis proved much greater. MacMillan was a hit on TV, and Hudson made few worthwhile films: Showdown (73, George Seaton); Embryo (76, Ralph Nelson); Avalanche (78, Corey Allen); The Mirror Crack'd (80, Guy Hamilton); as a movie director in I’he Star Maker (81, Lou Antonio) bedding all the starlets; as the President in World War III (82, David Greene); The Ambassador (84, f. Lee Thompson); and as a casino owner in The Vegas Strip Wars (84, George Englund).
Christmas Seal chairman, 1970. With United States Naval Reserve, 1941-1946.
When he came out of the navy in 1946, Roy Scherer was taken up by talent scout Henry Wilson and offered to David Selznick. Selznick saw only a truck-driver hunk with the unlikely new name of “Rock Hudson.”
So Willson got the kid installed at Universal as prime potential movie meat, something like a sincere Victor Mature, a soft rock. We have to marvel now about who knew what when. Henry Willson was a known homosexual. And Hudson, for all his physique, was already possessed of comedie talent and more intelligence than his first films had time for.
Hudson became the first famous victim of AIDS in movies, and everything he ever did became recast or reappraised in the light of the tragedy. Books said his marriage had been arranged to avert scandal. At the very least, the vaunted, rocklike masculinity of great male stars moved closer to the light. The rocks, sometimes, are cardboard shapes moved around by props people.
Married Phyllis Gates (divorced 1958).