Rock Hudson

Born in Winnetka (Illinois), on November 17, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr. was the only son of Kay Scherer (a housewife) and Roy Scherer, a mechanic who soon became detached from his family when he left the family home. . His mother moved to California where she got together with Wallace Fitzgerald, an aggressive man with whom the future actor never had a close relationship.

From a very young age, Roy realized that he was not good at studying. Immediately he began to carry out various trades, such as postman and taxi driver. He fought on the European front during World War II, and when he returned home he worked for a long time as a truck driver, until he was told that due to his size and physical attractiveness he had opportunities to work as an actor if he applied to Auditions.

Finally, he makes his film debut with Combat Squad , a war film by Raoul Walsh, where he does not even appear in the credits. In William Castle ‘s film-noir Undertow , he briefly plays a detective. They say that although he had obtained a permanent contract with Universal, Rock Hudson at first choked on the interpretation, and that in one of his first films, although he only had one sentence, he had to repeat it 38 times. .

Little by little, the young actor improves (very little by little) to the point that in Winchester 73 , by Anthony Mann , he is more or less convincing as an Indian chief, one of the various characters through whose hands the aforementioned rifle passes. in the title. The director trusted him again in another western, Far Horizons , where he plays a secondary character, a player from San Francisco.

Throughout the 1950s, Rock Hudson became a great star, after appearing in westerns such as Western Horizons and Betrayal at Fort King (both by specialist Budd Boetticher ) or Story of a Convicted Man (by Raoul Walsh ), adventure films such as Los gavilanes del strait and The sword of Damascus , and dramas such as His only wish .

With the relaxed comedy Have you seen my girl? he begins his fruitful series of collaborations with filmmaker Douglas Sirk . In the film, an elderly millionaire ( Charles Coburn ) decides to leave his fortune to the family of a woman who rejected him years before, including his daughter Millicent, whom he tries to win over as Hudson’s character. The film has a very friendly and relaxed tone and has a very brief appearance by the legendary James Dean , in one of his first works.

“Sometimes you feel scared and disoriented in life, and suddenly a mature man appears and tells you where you have to go. That person was Douglas Sirk ,” recalled the interpreter. “He was like a father to me.” The truth is that Hudson was born the same day as one of the filmmaker’s children, who was very fond of him. In total they would make nine films together.

Sirk once again recruits the actor for the western Race of Violence , where he once again plays an Indian, Taza, chief Cochise’s eldest son, who tries to safeguard his father’s pacifist ideas, against his brother’s desire for war.

It can be said that their first two films together are quite minor, but not so the third, Obsession , a remake of Sublime Obsession , by John M. Stahl , director from whom Sirk was to inherit the title of king of melodrama. Hudson played a millionaire who feels guilty over the passing of a good-hearted doctor, while also falling increasingly in love with the widow ( Jane Wyman ). The enormous success of the film established both the director and Hudson himself.

For Sirk, Hudson and Wyman were his ideal leading men. She does not hesitate to recruit them again for Heaven Only Knows , where she played a wealthy widow, who falls in love with a younger gardener, sparking opposition from the woman’s children and all kinds of gossip.

In the light but entertaining Pride of Race , the actor plays an Irishman who fights against the English, acting as a highwayman on the roads. Another of the most interesting titles from the Hudson-Sirk duo was Written on the Wind , where the heir to an oil empire ( Robert Stack ) marries a woman (Lauren Bacall) who also attracts his friend and confidante Mitch Wayne (Hudson). .

In Hymn of Battle, the interpreter embodies a priest tormented by his years at the front. Tarnished Angels adapts a text by William Faulkner , with Hudson as a journalist writing about a down-on-his-luck aviator who puts on an air show to support his family. Although he is not credited in the titles, Sirk also had Hudson under his command in numerous sequences of the film Today Like Yesterday , officially directed by Jerry Hopper .

In addition to his work with Sirk, Hudson had a huge success with George Stevens ‘ Gigante , where he played the owner of a sprawling ranch, who turns from a rancher to an oilman, while falling in love with his wife ( Elizabeth Taylor ) one of its employees (again James Dean in one of his iconic roles).

In the mid-50s, the tabloid press was about to echo the rumors about the actor’s homosexuality. His agent, Henry Willson, feared this would radically affect the star’s box office pull, so he rushed to arrange a wedding between his secretary, Phyllis Gates, and Hudson. Theoretically it was a secret ceremony, although Willson took it upon himself to inform Hollywood’s gossipiest columnists, Hedda Hooper and Louella Parsons . Gates was delighted with Hudson’s attentions, but when she found out about her homosexuality, she quietly divorced him. She wrote a book, “My Husband: Rock Hudson “, where she recorded how bad it happened. Traumatized, she did not remarry.

Although Rock Hudson’s filmography is dominated by dramatic titles, such as A Farewell to Arms , This Land Is Mine or The Eagle’s Nest , he gains great recognition with Michael Gordon ‘s inspired comedy Midnight Confidence , in which a music composer discovers that he temporarily shares the phone line with a decorator, played by Doris Day . The actor would appear with her again in Pajamas for Two , by Delbert Mann , about a couple of publicists, and Don’t Send Me Flowers , by Norman Jewison, in which the characters of both are married; he plays a hypochondriac who thinks he is going to die and decides to find another husband for his wife. The three films work because of the contrast between his crazy character, and the responsible women that correspond to her. They are accompanied in the three tapes by Tony Randall , always as the third in contention in the conquest of the character of Day.

The interpreter also exploits his comic side in His Favorite Game , which accuses too much that its director, Howard Hawks , conceived it with Cary Grant in mind. After playing several soldiers in the films Tobruk , Hot, Hot and Dangerous , Zebra Ice Station , The Expendables and Darling Lili , Rock Hudson ‘s career languishes. But he finds refuge on television with the well-remembered series McMillan and wife , where he plays a policeman who solves all kinds of cases with the help of his wife. In the fifth season, actress Susan Saint Jameshe did not reach an agreement with the production company, so Hudson’s character was left a widower and the series was renamed simply McMillan.

Following the Martian Chronicles miniseries , a struggling but unsuccessful adaptation of Ray Bradbury ‘s book , Hudson last appeared on the big screen in Ambassador to the Middle East , about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He ended his run as the widower who wooed Linda Evans’ character, a married woman, on the hit series Dynasty .

In the mid-1980s, Rock Hudson was one of the first famous people to publicly announce that he had AIDS, a disease that at that time terrified public opinion. “I’m not happy that I have AIDS, but if revealing it can help others, at least I can know that my own misfortune has a positive value,” said the actor. He passed away on October 2, 1985 at his Beverly Hills home.