by Mark Griffin
While Rock would maintain an athletic physique throughout most of his career, trainer Frankie Van had gotten him into peak condition. “The studio executives were taking a big chance because he didn’t know how to box,” Van remembered. “But I had faith in him. I put him in training and you never saw a boy work any harder.” In six weeks, Hudson had shed ten pounds as a result of his intense workouts and daily sparring sessions with costar Jeff Chandler. Van also had to teach a left-handed Rock how to throw punches with his right hand. As a result of Rock’s tenacity, Van recalled that Hudson was “suddenly more like Gene than Gene Tunney.”
SHE REFERRED TO him as either “Igor” or “Dear Old Dad.” He called her “Fortuna Divine” or “Magda Upswitch.” After they worked together on a number of films in the early 1950s, Rock and script supervisor Betty Abbott Griffin became close friends. Griffin’s own tenure at Universal predated Hudson’s and she thought of Rock and her other colleagues as extended family. “I was a messenger girl before I became a script girl,” says Griffin. “In those days, the studio had a very family feeling to it. When I was delivering the mail, I got to know everybody. They were like your uncle or your brother and it was wonderful.” Actually, Betty really did have an uncle gainfully employed at Universal—Bud Abbott, the “straight man” half of the cross-talking comedy team Abbott and Costello.
“Rock fit right into this family atmosphere,” says Griffin. “He was great fun, with this wonderful, wild sense of humor. Between takes, he was a real devil, always playing tricks on people. But with me, he became like a big brother. Very protective.” Rock was drawn to Betty’s unaffected, down-to-earth personality. Not only did they share an absurdist sense of humor but they both worshipped the same screen siren.
“He had a tremendous crush on Lana Turner and I thought Lana was the greatest thing since you-know-what,” Griffin says. “I remember once, he and I didn’t have much money but we went to the market and bought anchovy paste and Saltine crackers. We went down to Los Angeles to see a Lana Turner picture and we sat there, eating our anchovy paste and crackers for dinner because we had spent all of our money just so that we could see her. In those days, we had no money but it didn’t matter because he made everything we did such fun.”
It wasn’t long before Photoplay took note of “a camaraderie seldom seen in Hollywood” and magazines were devoting lengthy articles to “Rock’s Mystery Girl,” who was described as “a lovely, vivid blonde . . . with warmth and understanding and a rare gift for gayety.” Suddenly, the fanzines had turned a devoted friendship into a full-blown romance. Modern Screen didn’t mince words: “Despite the diplomacy, the hedging, the shying away from any talk about marriage, Betty Abbott is the number one girl in Rock Hudson’s life.” Rock’s mother was even called upon to give her carefully worded blessing in print: “I surely hope that Rock marries Betty, if he marries anyone. I would love to have that girl as my daughter-in-law.”
Countless teenage girls may have been heartbroken when a magazine ran a photo of their idol captioned: “Heading for a Wedding?” But Betty Abbott Griffin says that she and her “intended” had a very different reaction whenever they read that wedding bells were about to chime: “We would laugh our heads off,” Griffin says. “It was publicity. Nothing more, nothing less than that.”
Chapter 5
“We Want Hudson!”
Rock and director Raoul Walsh during the making of The Lawless Breed (1952)
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC
Along a thousand miles of majestic river roars this epic of the opening of our last untamed frontier!” blared the trailer for Bend of the River. Two years after Winchester ’73, star James Stewart, director Anthony Mann, and producer Aaron Rosenberg would all reunite—this time in glorious Technicolor—for a widescreen adaptation of Bill Gulick’s bestselling novel, Bend of the Snake.
In 1840s Oregon, Glyn McLyntock (Stewart), a former Missouri border raider, is guiding a wagon train of peaceful settlers intent on becoming ranchers and establishing their own community. Along the way McLyntock reunites with Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy), his former partner, who has a nasty habit of stealing provisions intended for impoverished settlers and selling them for profit.
Many familiar faces from Universal’s roster of contract players, including Julie Adams and Lori Nelson, would appear in Mann’s sweeping production. Fourth-billed Rock Hudson, having graduated from Young Bull, was now playing professional gambler Trey Wilson of San Francisco, whom McLyntock describes as “a right handsome fella.”
While on location in Oregon, Hudson had an opportunity to observe Stewart at work. Rock was impressed with how much time and effort the actor invested in his portrayal of a man attempting to redeem himself while struggling with the dual sides of his nature. Although Stewart worked diligently in terms of building a character, he typically gave a performance that seemed effortless and unaffected. There were no false gestures, no self-consciousness.
Early in his film career, Stewart had discovered the secret of using his own inner life to make his characters—no matter how thinly drawn or poorly conceived—seem fully human and totally believable. Even while cranking out four pictures a year at MGM, Stewart had managed to combine his stage training with his own idiosyncratic brand of Method acting, without a single Strasberg in sight.
Hudson marveled at Stewart’s ability to somehow make audiences share his feelings and have even the tritest dialogue sound as though it had just tripped off his tongue. How much of Stewart’s technique was absorbed and later appropriated by the twenty-seven-year-old Rock Hudson? His costars remember Rock watching Stewart very intently, especially when he was preparing for a particularly dramatic scene.
“I remember watching Jim and thinking, he’s not really ‘doing’ anything,” recalls leading lady Julie Adams. “Yet when we looked at the rushes later, everything was there . . . I have no doubt that Rock was paying very close attention to all of this and filing everything away for later. He was just like a sponge that way.”
If Bend of the River would prove to be another hit for the unbeatable team of Stewart and Mann, this tale of redemption can also be credited with giving the career of Rock Hudson an important boost at a crucial moment. Not only was this the first time that Hudson’s name appeared above the picture’s title, but it was his first opportunity to share scenes with an established star. Iron Man may have succeeded in exploiting Rock’s sex appeal, but Bend of the River would legitimize him. Hey, there’s that good-looking kid from Universal holding his own with Jimmy Stewart. How about that? And thanks to the efforts of Universal’s publicity team, “Rock Hudson” was quickly turning into a salable commodity with a steadily growing fan base.
Rock would always remember the reception he received when he attended the world premiere of Bend of the River in Portland, Oregon. Along with James Stewart and Julie Adams, Hudson rode in a procession of convertibles as they made their way to J. J. Parker’s Broadway Theater, where the film was screened. The Oregonian’s Phyllis Lauritz reported that an estimated 10,000 movie fans “pushed, pulled, clutched and clawed” cast members and there was one star in particular that everybody wanted to see. “Handsome Rock Hudson’s arrival sent the bobbysoxers into a chant of ‘We want Hudson!’ that not even the subsequent presentation of other feature players and studio dignitaries could subdue.”
Later, at a podium outside of the theatre, each star was asked to say a few words before entering. As Rock remembered it, the crowd applauded and cheered him more enthusiastically than the film’s top-billed star. “It went to my head,” Hudson recounted in his memoir. “I was floating! Me over Jimmy Stewart?”
While it wasn’t surprising that the young Rock Hudson would inspire some appreciative squealing, it is unusual that a supporting player would receive this kind of rousing welcome. It’s been suggested that Universal publicists may have planted a few in-house “fans” (studio employees) among the real ones. As for Jimmy Stewart, the local press did repor
t that he was “mobbed” by autograph seekers and nearly pulled off the platform by his more ardent admirers.
Bill Gulick, author of the novel on which the film was based, liked Rock’s performance but he wasn’t pleased with the rest of the picture. He told The Oregonian that the screen version substituted Hollywood spectacle for historical accuracy: “The movie makers threw my book away and retained only three words of my title. If someone mislaid his steamboats and Shoshones, it wasn’t I.”
WHEN U-I EXECUTIVES viewed the rushes from the otherwise unimpressive Tomahawk, it occurred to them that Yvonne De Carlo and Rock Hudson—two of the screen’s great beauties—might make for a perfect couple in a modestly budgeted drama. The picture the studio assigned them to, Scarlet Angel, would mark Hudson’s first film as a romantic lead. Rock’s latest vehicle would be camouflaged just enough so that it wasn’t instantly recognizable as a quasi-remake of Rene Clair’s The Flame of New Orleans, in which an impoverished Marlene Dietrich masquerades as a countess.
For Scarlet Angel, screenwriter Oscar Brodney retained the New Orleans setting but shifted the action from the eighteenth century to just after the Civil War. Taking over from Dietrich, De Carlo is scrappy dance-hall hostess Roxy McClanahan, who is “about as subtle as a tropical cyclone.” Shortly after meeting rugged, bar-brawling sea captain Frank Truscott (Hudson), Roxy makes off with his bankroll as well as the baby of a deceased war widow, whose identity she assumes.
During the making of Scarlet Angel, Hudson completely charmed costar Bodil Miller, who played the doomed widow. “I first met Rock when we were both enrolled in Sophie Rosenstein’s drama classes,” says Miller. “We studied together. He was a great friend and a wonderful person . . . I really liked Yvonne De Carlo, too. She had a tremendous charm about her. Actually, I think she had a bit of a crush on Rock but he seemed to be too busy in those days to respond.”
This was the third film in which De Carlo and Hudson had worked together and the leading lady had noticed a change for the better in her costar. “He was doing leads now and had come a long way since Tomahawk,” De Carlo said. “He was no longer awkward before the camera, and I was sure now—a bit late—that Rock was on his way to movie stardom.”
In complete agreement was budding film historian Robert Osborne, who now made a point of seeing each new Rock Hudson movie as soon as it was released. “After he gained some attention in the early films, like Iron Man and Scarlet Angel, it was wonderful to watch him grow as an actor,” Osborne said. “So often there were people starring in films simply because of the way they looked. They would be given wonderful opportunities but their talent didn’t really grow. Over time, Rock was one who really did grow as an actor, as did Tony Curtis. They became wonderful actors, and that was really an exciting thing to see.”
Although the pictures were now coming one right after another, Rock always seemed to be scraping by financially. So, he could only laugh when informed that his next film would be entitled Oh Money, Money. Joseph Hoffman’s screenplay fondly recalled “the happy days and the mad fads” of the Roaring Twenties. In this era of bobbed hair, raccoon coats, and speakeasies, good times flowed as freely as bathtub gin. At least until everything came crashing down on Black Tuesday. As it was essentially a lighthearted comedy with musical interludes, the movie was eventually retitled Has Anybody Seen My Gal after one of the popular tunes of the day. Despite the title change, the film’s focus is obvious from the very beginning. A silent movie–style title card flashes on-screen and it doesn’t mince words: “This is a story about Money . . . Remember It?”
In Rock’s latest vehicle, an eccentric millionaire named Samuel Fulton (Charles Coburn) intends to leave his vast fortune to the family of a deceased paramour named Millicent, who spurned his marriage proposal some forty years earlier. Fulton tracks down Millicent’s daughter, Harriet Blaisdell (Lynn Bari), who is not so blissfully wed to small-town druggist Charles (Larry Gates).
Posing as a painter named “Mr. Smith,” Fulton rents a room from the Blaisdells so that he can closely observe the effects his anonymous gift of $100,000 will have on this “typical” middle-class family. The results are hardly what Fulton had hoped for. Once she’s well-off, Harriet wastes no time mutating into a snobby social climber. She evicts Mr. Smith and decides that poor soda jerk, Dan Stebbins (Hudson), isn’t good enough to marry daughter Millie (Piper Laurie). Meanwhile, Charles sells the drugstore and begins playing the stock market while son Howard (William Reynolds) takes up gambling. What should be the family’s darkest moment proves to be their salvation. When Charles loses everything in the ’29 crash, the Blaisdells end up flat broke but everyone is genuinely happy once more.
“It was a charming movie,” says Piper Laurie, “but I personally felt that soda jerk part was beneath Rock . . . Here’s this six-foot-four hunk and they had him saying lines that sounded like they belonged in a teenager’s mouth.” Even so, Hudson is as ingratiating as the movie itself. Whether teaching old-timer Charles Coburn how to serve up a strawberry surprise or doing the Charleston with Piper Laurie, Rock makes the most of a role that would have been instantly forgettable in other hands. Has Anybody Seen My Gal would be the first of two successful screen teamings for Rock and Piper. Even more significantly, the picture would bring Hudson together with Douglas Sirk, the director who would prove to be more influential than any other in terms of molding Rock’s screen persona.
Born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg in 1897, Sirk was “lost to the theatre,” as he put it, after the first play he directed became a surprise success in 1922. Many of the signature touches that would later distinguish his Hollywood films were first introduced in his stage work. Whatever the medium, Sirk would excel at presenting what he called “dramas of swollen emotions”; his visually arresting production design provided ironic commentary on the plight of his characters and their often conflicted states of mind.
“Mr. Sirk was an absolutely fascinating person, and in time he became very much like a surrogate father to Rock,” says Betty Abbott Griffin, who worked as a script supervisor on several of the director’s films. “He and his [second] wife, Hilde, had a fantastic background. He was the great director and she was an actress—sort of like the Shirley Temple of Germany. Hilde was of Jewish descent, so during the war they had to make arrangements to leave Europe.” Once in Hollywood, Hans Sierck became Douglas Sirk, and by 1950 he was under contract to Universal. Almost immediately, the director found his muse.
“I saw a picture Rock was playing in, with Jeff Chandler in the lead [Iron Man]. He had a small part, and he was far inferior to Chandler, but I thought I saw something. So, I arranged to meet him, and he seemed to be not too much to the eye, except very handsome. But the camera sees with its own eye. It sees things that the human eye does not detect . . . I gave him an extensive test, and then put him into Has Anybody Seen My Gal. The only thing which never let me down in Hollywood was my camera. And it was not wrong about Hudson.”
“I think that Mr. Sirk found something that other people didn’t find in Rock, which was the intensity to not only become an actor but a fine actor,” says Griffin. “The patience that Mr. Sirk had was just incredible. I think that had a lot to do with it. He was impressed by the fact that Rock was really trying very hard and that he wanted to succeed.”
With Has Anybody Seen My Gal, Sirk’s camera was trained on not one future superstar but two. Twenty-one-year-old James Dean briefly appears as one of Rock’s customers. Dean delivers his one line (“A choc malt, heavy on the choc, plenty of milk . . .”) in his trademark sulky style.
“Nobody knew Jimmy then,” says Piper Laurie. “He was just sitting at the counter and nobody paid any attention to him. Extras were just extras. I was very into my own work and I didn’t socialize a lot on the set. Years later, my Uncle Maury called me from New York, said he was watching the movie on television and asked me, ‘Do you know who that was sitting in the drugstore?’”
Only three years later, Hudson and Dean woul
d work together again, though each would be a major player in Hollywood by that time, appearing in one of the most important films of each of their careers. But Rock’s participation in a prestige project would have to wait. For now, it was on to a pair of B-Westerns. Although director Budd Boetticher would eventually be acclaimed as a master of the genre and some of his stark, pictorially striking Westerns of the 1950s are considered classics, Horizons West isn’t one of them.
Neal Hammond (Hudson) and his older brother, Dan (Robert Ryan), survive the Civil War, but once they return to Texas they lead very different postwar lives. Neal settles down on his father’s ranch while power-hungry Dan turns to rustling, ruthlessly seizing control of the territory. Every bit of character development is not only telegraphed but followed by an exclamation point: “I’m going to have land and the land will be covered with cattle and cotton! I’m building an empire!” the corrupt Hammond proclaims. “When I’m on the top, people will swear that I’ve done nothing wrong!” To which one of his lackeys responds, “This reconstruction period is made to order for you! No Texas rangers. Very little law!”
“Horizons West bites the dust before anybody in it,” the New York Times said in its thumbs-down review. However, The Lawless Breed, which came next, would prove to be an important vehicle for its star. For once, Rock’s character offered him a legitimate acting challenge. And for the first time, he’d be portraying a real person on screen—namely the notorious gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, a ruthless desperado “so mean, he once shot a man for snoring.”
Born in Texas in 1853, Hardin boasted in his autobiography that he had killed forty-two men (thirty-four more than Billy the Kid, for those keeping score). Apart from Hardin’s quite obvious character flaws, there were some unusual dualities in the outlaw’s life that Hudson could use in terms of building a compelling characterization. Ironically, one of the most infamous criminals of the Old West was the son of an especially devout Methodist preacher. At least according to Bernard Gordon’s screenplay, Hardin’s father “carried his Bible like a six gun” and attempted to bullwhip the fear of god into his rebellious son—shades of Wallace Fitzgerald here.*
