by Mark Griffin
Like Hudson, actor Jack Larson (best remembered as Jimmy Olsen in The Adventures of Superman series) would also make his movie debut in Fighter Squadron. As Larson recalls: “It was considered a big film at that time. The reason everyone was carrying on so much about it is because [studio chief] Jack Warner, who had been this sort of bogus colonel in the air force, had managed to get all of the Technicolor footage of D-Day, which was quite rare. Warner turned to two of his top people, [producer] Seton Miller and [writer] Marty Rackin and assigned them to concoct a film around this D-Day footage.”
The authentic combat footage was not so seamlessly blended with the saga of U.S. airman Ed Hardin (Edmond O’Brien). Stationed at an American air base in England in 1943, the headstrong Hardin is nearly court-martialed after disobeying orders during a bombing raid over Germany. Although Hardin downs more enemy planes than any of his fellow officers, his recklessness continually puts the entire unit at risk.
Rock makes his inauspicious debut about thirty minutes into Fighter Squadron. He’s one of a group of flyboys listening to a captain bragging about his sexual exploits: “Did you ever have a lovely, tall blonde covered with perfume from heaven entice you into a $14,000 limousine?” In an uncredited role that is the very definition of a bit part, Rock is fleetingly glimpsed in a few scenes in which members of Hardin’s squadron gather in the base canteen. “Get out the good dice, I have $400 burning a hole in my pocket . . .” is his only substantial line,* though every time the boyishly handsome Hudson appears, he manages to catch the eye. Jack Larson remembers that Rock was originally supposed to have made even more of an impression in the picture.
“Rock had one very good scene that was cut from the film,” Larson remembers. “That scene was with my character, Lieutenant ‘Shorty’ Kirk. We shot it over and over for a day and a half. He just couldn’t do it. In this scene, my character is in his private air corps cubicle and he’s shaving. Rock’s character pays me a visit and says, ‘You’re too young to shave . . .’ I tell him that I’m shaving because it’s my birthday and I’m now old enough to do so. The camera zooms in on a calendar. It’s not only my birthday but it’s also D-Day. The music swells.”
The scene didn’t present Rock with much of an acting challenge, but as Walsh and his crew prepared to shoot what should have been a routine sequence, Hudson worked himself up into a state of complete panic. He agonized over his minimal dialogue, fretted about hitting his marks, and obsessed over completing basic bits of stage business. The simple act of knocking on a door was enough to completely immobilize him.
“I could tell he was sweating. The poor guy was just terrified,” Larson says. “He had never really been in front of the camera and here was this great director determined to make a star out of him.” Larson remembered that Walsh went to great lengths to help Hudson, instructing the actor to silently count to ten before knocking. When this didn’t work, the director even installed a light beside the door to cue him. “When the light comes on, you knock,” Walsh told Hudson. Places were called. Cameras rolled. The cue light came on. And as before, Rock froze.
As Larson remembers: “Finally, after many takes and Rock still not doing anything, Walsh yelled at him, ‘Damn it, you big lug. Don’t just stand there like a tree! Get out of the middle of the shot, for Christ’s sake.’” For the record, leading man Robert Stack remembered it as “a goddamned Christmas tree.”
“It was very sad and I felt awful for him,” says Larson. Though not quite as awful as Hudson himself. Decades later, he was still embarrassed. “I remember when I first saw myself on screen, in the dailies. My God! What a clumsy, tongue-tied galoot I was!” Hudson told journalist Rowland Barber. “After that, every extra cent I made, I started putting into acting lessons and voice lessons and body-movement lessons.”
When Fighter Squadron was released in November of 1948, it received mixed reviews. Given his practically nonexistent screen time, the critics took no notice of newcomer Rock Hudson, who wasn’t even listed in the credits.* Back in Winnetka, however, Roy Fitzgerald’s screen debut had not gone unnoticed. The fact that the shy, soft-spoken New Trier graduate had been cast in a major Hollywood movie was nothing short of astounding. Old friends Jim Matteoni and Pat McGuire were dumbfounded. “I just couldn’t believe it,” says McGuire. “Jim and I used to mumble about Roy and his sudden success. That was all we could do because he was on a completely different planet from us now.”
Not nearly as impressed with Rock’s screen debut was his mother. “When I took her to that movie, she had no idea,” Hudson recalled. “She thought I was still driving a truck. None of her business. I was over twenty-one. I’ll do what I damn well please.” As she would always be her son’s staunchest supporter and severest critic, Kay Olsen’s reaction when the lights came up was unusually candid: “Save your money.”
While Rock hadn’t exactly burned up the screen in Fighter Squadron, at least now he had a picture under his belt. Based on his looks alone, Warner Brothers was prepared to offer Hudson both a studio contract and a starring role in Raoul Walsh’s next production, a Western redux of one of the director’s biggest hits: “I remade High Sierra as Colorado Territory because Warners was stuck for a release,” Walsh remembered.
High Sierra had supplied Humphrey Bogart with one of his best roles as the renegade prison parolee “Mad Dog” Earle. For an inexperienced newcomer like Rock Hudson, this would be a tough act to follow. Even so, Warner Brothers was willing to roll the dice as long as Walsh would be calling the shots. Rock could hardly believe his ears. A big studio contract? Playing the lead in only his second film? Although he hadn’t been out of Winnetka all that long, Hudson knew there had to be a catch—and, of course, there was.
If Warners was graciously offering Hudson the chance to follow in Bogie’s footsteps, he’d have to sign a seven-year studio contract to demonstrate his gratitude. Suddenly, the offer didn’t sound so appealing. Besides, Rock already had a contract—with Walsh. Hudson felt a loyalty to the man who had given him his first big break in the business. Though he was hardly in a position to turn anyone down, Rock found himself telling Warners “No thank you . . . ,” and the doomed hero in Colorado Territory went to Joel McCrea.
Even though Hudson wouldn’t appear in the film, Walsh insisted that he tag along when the company started shooting in a small town appropriately named Gallup: “I took him on location to New Mexico . . . I put a couple of cowboys with him. I said, ‘Show this bum how to get on a horse and how to get off and how to ride. And rough him up.’ I asked, ‘Fellas, what time do you get up in the morning?’ They said, ‘We get up at five.’ I said, ‘Get him up at five.’”
But according to the film’s leading lady, Virginia Mayo, Rock did not get up at five. Or anything close to it. “He would wander onto the set around noon, after the rest of us had been working since 6 a.m., and Raoul would say, ‘Rock, you have to get on the set and work with the cowboys at dawn. You do not just decide to show up at noon or one o’clock.’ He would show up finally and then just goof around. He liked to play! He was just a huge kid. Raoul would scold him, but Rock would just pour on that gigantic, charming grin routine and all would be forgiven—until the next time.”
Considering the Fighter Squadron debacle and Hudson’s unprofessional antics during the making of Colorado Territory, it’s not surprising that Raoul Walsh began to wonder if his protégé had any kind of future in Hollywood. With considerable time left on Rock’s contract, the director decided that Hudson should continue to assume a variety of roles—although none of them would wind up on a movie screen.
At one point, columnist James Bacon remembered seeing Rock chauffeuring Walsh around town. When he wasn’t occupying the driver’s seat, Hudson could be found painting the director’s house or watering his lawn. Despite the fact that things didn’t look promising, Henry Willson was undeterred. In July of 1949, the agent arranged for Rock to screen test at 20th Century-Fox. The test would be directed by writer-producer Richard Sale (F
ather Was a Fullback) and would also feature actress Kathleen Hughes.
“He was certainly very handsome, no question about that and he was also very pleasant but there was just no spark there,” Hughes says of Hudson. “I mean, there was really no chemistry with us. He did not appeal to me as a man or as someone that I would want to date. I didn’t get much of an impression of him at all, except that he was just another good-looking actor. I was much more interested in the director of the screen test. In fact, I had a huge crush on him. But Rock Hudson, no.”
In the test, Rock plays an ex-soldier named “Vic,” who compares his entire platoon being wiped out to a month-long estrangement from his fiancée: “The last winter of the war, over in Germany, for thirty days and nights, we took a steady beating . . . but that was nothing compared to the beating I’ve taken these last thirty days and nights. The score adds up to this—you’re all there is for me.”
Contrary to later reports that Rock’s test was so bad that Fox regularly screened it for freshman contract players as an example of what not to do when appearing before the cameras, he is as believable as anyone could be, given the material.
Upon reviewing the test, an unnamed executive jotted down his thoughts on Hudson: “Very photogenic. Likeable. Voice—Good. Needs training—he might have a unique appeal.” In a sense, the test offered a preview of the distinctive movie star aura that audiences would eventually respond to so strongly. Here was a tall, dark, handsome heartthrob who managed to be vulnerable and tender without forfeiting an ounce of his masculinity. “Unique appeal” indeed. Moviegoers would be drawn to a certain duality in Hudson without realizing how deep the divide really went.
Despite Fox’s favorable assessment, the studio did not put Rock under contract. But even if Darryl Zanuck didn’t bite, Warner Brothers and Universal did. Both studios offered to buy Hudson’s contract from Raoul Walsh, with the latter emerging as the high bidder. In August of 1949 and only a year after personally signing him, Walsh would sell Hudson’s contract to Universal-International for $9,700. The newcomer would be earning $125 a week.* At the time, it seemed like a real bargain as Hudson hardly seemed poised to give Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable a run for their money.
None of those involved in negotiating the deal with Universal—not Henry Willson, not Raoul Walsh and certainly not Rock himself, could have ever imagined that in a few short years, he would not only be Universal’s top star but the number one box office attraction in the world. Rock Hudson . . . king of the movie stars? The same guy who had inordinate difficulty opening a door on cue? Go on.
Chapter 4
Universal
Winnetka’s own as an Arab in The Desert Hawk (1950)
(Courtesy Everett Collection)
When Rock Hudson first arrived at Universal in 1949, the studio was in the throes of its latest identity crisis. Cash-strapped and operating under a deficit of $4.3 million, Universal’s once promising postwar future suddenly seemed very uncertain.
In recent years, the studio had transitioned from producing folksy, unpretentious crowd-pleasers (Pardon My Sarong, The Egg and I) to distributing loftier prestige pictures (Great Expectations, Hamlet). This sudden change had earned Universal critical acclaim and Oscar attention but not desperately needed profits. Though this was hardly anything new. Over the years, Universal’s fortunes seemed to ebb and flow in accordance with the unpredictability of popular taste as well as the studio’s own internal upheavals. And it had been that way since the very beginning.
Founded in 1912 by exhibitor turned producer Carl Laemmle, Universal had been operating under the same business model since its earliest days, when one-reelers were cranked out on the 230 acres of farmland north of the Hollywood Hills that Laemmle had purchased for $165,000. In 1915, Laemmle welcomed exhibitors to what he described as “the biggest moving picture plant in the wide, wide world.” And this was no empty boast. From day one, Universal City Studios was a fully integrated organization. Production, distribution, and publicity were all managed in-house. The joke around town was that Carl Laemmle did everything but sell you the popcorn.
If competitors MGM and Paramount catered to the metropolitan moviegoer with sumptuous musicals and sophisticated comedies featuring A-list stars, Universal couldn’t be bothered with anything quite so high-minded. Laemmle promised his audiences pictures in which “we blow up bridges, burn down houses, wreck automobiles and smash up things in general.” As film historian Ethan Mordden has noted, Universal could lay claim to “the least ambitious aesthetic of all the major studios.”
It was Universal’s innocuous escapist fare that kept audiences coming back for more. Teenage soprano Deanna Durbin’s pictures saved the studio from bankruptcy during the Depression. And Universal’s series of horror movies—Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy—not only kept the ledgers in the black but became the one genre where the studio excelled.
In 1946, Universal merged with the independently operated International Pictures. Once the reorganization was complete, the studio had a new head of production, William Goetz, who was not only International’s founder but also the son-in-law of Metro’s all-powerful Louis B. Mayer. When Goetz took control, the studio was awkwardly rechristened Universal-International. Goetz intended that the name change would be a signal to both the industry and the ticket-buying public that a new day had dawned at the studio.
A Universal-International production would now outclass the competition with adaptations of acclaimed Broadway dramas. The radical shift resulted in more urbane fare being doled out to audiences in Podunk who had grown accustomed to seeing La Conga Nights or Bride of Frankenstein. Not sure quite what to make of the latest “highbrow” pictures screening at the neighborhood Bijou, audiences stayed away.
By the end of the 1940s, everything possible was being done to return Universal-International to a state of fiscal stability. Lowbrow series featuring the likes of Francis the Talking Mule, Abbott and Costello, and Ma and Pa Kettle once again dominated the production schedule. If Universal-International found itself in a precarious position at the end of the decade, the situation wasn’t much better for twenty-four-year-old Rock Hudson, whose own future was unsettled. What if he blew it at Universal just as he had at Warners? After much wrangling, Henry Willson had negotiated Hudson’s $125-a-week contract with Universal. The pressure was on.
Nervous executives were taking a close look at any contract players who didn’t seem to be doing their bit to improve the bottom line. While at the same time, studio manager Edward Muhl (who had joined Universal back in the silent era as a $50-a-week accountant) was keeping a close eye on any newcomers who seemed to exhibit genuine star potential. In time, Muhl would not only become head of production at Universal but also one of Rock’s most powerful allies. But all of that was still in the future.
In the summer of 1949, Hudson was all too aware of how expendable he was. There were constant reminders from Henry Willson, who advised his favorite client to play ball with the studio, no matter how outrageous the demands might be. If Universal wanted him to drop the “k” from his first name and become “Roc” (just like the mythological bird of prey), he should do it. If the publicity department asked him to pose shirtless while washing his car, grilling steaks, or playing solitaire, he should suck his stomach in and gladly oblige photographers. In the event that producers made friendly advances, it was understood that he should willingly submit. In every way possible, Rock—or “Roc” if they insisted—simply had to become the model contract player.
Ken Hodge, Henry Willson, and Raoul Walsh may have all played an important role in molding an ex-truck driver into an employable actor. But the most miraculous part of the transformation would be completed in Universal’s stock-player training program. “Universal in those days was almost ‘collegiate,’” says actress Julie Adams. “Especially for the younger people who were under contract. They had programs so that you could come to the studio and take dancing lessons, you could take singing lessons, and they h
ad horseback riding on the back lot . . . In those days, the studio offered a young actor every opportunity to learn something new.”
One of the key people helping new contract players find their way was Sophie Rosenstein. The author of Modern Acting: A Manual, Rosenstein was Universal’s head of talent and the studio’s chief acting coach. She was unwavering in her belief that good acting was based on two cardinal principles: “Absolute sincerity and absolute simplicity. There is no substitute for genuine emotion.” When she wasn’t guiding performances in her classes, the diminutive Rosenstein also played den mother to her new recruits.
Rock would attend Rosenstein’s diction and drama workshops alongside such rising stars as Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Hugh O’Brian, and Mamie Van Doren. While other performers were more polished or self-assured, Rosenstein zeroed in on the bashful young man who always seemed to be gnawing at his fingernails. Clearly there was much work to be done, but Rosenstein sensed that there was something there. While watching Hudson play a few scenes, she took inventory: “His biggest asset is stamina,” Rosenstein declared. “His biggest failing, shyness. It’s torture for him to get up and act before an audience, even this audience of other young players in the workshop, but he keeps doing it. He talks too fast and he doesn’t stand straight but he’s learning and he’s willing. He’ll make it.”
Another staunch supporter during his early days at the studio was actress Piper Laurie. “I first met Rock before either of us was under contract,” Laurie recalls. “They decided to screen test both of us and see if they wanted us under contract. So they put us together in this very dramatic, romantic scene. I was seventeen but I looked fourteen, with experience that matched. With a straight face, I had to look up at him and say, ‘I love you like this, all stirred up with fire in your eyes.’ Well, we could barely get through it. We couldn’t stop laughing. But they signed both of us anyway and we became very good friends during that period.”
