by Mark Griffin
Even so, Rock was willing to endure all of the snickering if playing Taza meant that he was that much closer to becoming a leading man. In a sense, Taza was a feature-length screen test. If he worked well with Douglas Sirk, he’d be reteamed with the director for Magnificent Obsession, the vehicle that had been painstakingly planned as his breakthrough.
Despite the great talent involved, Hudson knew that Taza was only a notch above average. The picture would be redeemed by Sirk’s psychological layering and a pro-Indian stance, which was unusual for Hollywood in the early 1950s. Set in the Arizona Territory in 1874, the story begins with the death of Cochise,* an old Apache warrior. Before taking the “Big Sleep,” Cochise appoints his elder son, Taza, as the new tribal leader. Peace-loving Taza vows to live in harmony with the “White Eyes,” though his younger brother, Naiche, believes the tribe should join forces with Geronimo and resist any attempts at containment by the United States Cavalry.
Sirk worked closely with screenwriter George Zuckerman on developing the script. Throughout the narrative, Taza struggles with his divided allegiance—he’s torn between protecting the members of his tribe and obeying the commands of the cavalry leaders he has promised to assist. This is neatly summarized in a sequence in which Taza heads off to battle, wearing half Indian garb and half of an officer’s uniform. This was the kind of “split” character that Sirk was intrigued by and one that the director knew that Rock would immediately identify with. In fact, who better than Hudson to play a protagonist torn between his natural instincts and a more conformist existence?
If the sweltering conditions—shooting outside in the desert, in the dead of summer, under the blazing sun—weren’t bad enough, the entire company had to endure lengthy setups and camera tests, necessitated by the use of 3-D equipment, which Sirk considered a nuisance. For a climactic battle sequence, which took Sirk and cinematographer Russell Metty a week to shoot, real Native Americans were employed as extras. To the director’s delight, they “hadn’t been spoiled by [John] Ford.” The fact that the Indians weren’t of the Hollywood variety caused Hudson even greater embarrassment. “I felt like such a fool and a complete imposter,” Hudson would later tell George Nader.
When Taza was released in February of 1954, Variety commended Sirk for his “forceful” direction and ability to make “every scene an eye-filling experience.” The leading man, however, was only faintly praised: “Rock Hudson suffices in action demands of his role as Taza, but character is none too believable.”
* * *
“It’s double-Technicolor,” is how Rock would describe Magnificent Obsession nearly twenty years after he had appeared in the film. While full of praise for costar Jane Wyman and director Douglas Sirk, Hudson felt that the movie was too saccharine (even for an old-fashioned weepie) and that it didn’t completely hold up. “It comes off as trite—each line is just dripping with love,” was Rock’s surprisingly candid assessment.
And yet, he knew that Magnificent Obsession was one of those films that fans wholeheartedly embraced—whether they took it at face value or appreciated it for its countless camp delights. Whatever the case, when all was said and done, it was the movie that made Rock Hudson a star. Though he nearly blew his big break.
Only two weeks before production launched, Hudson, Jack Navaar, George Nader, and Mark Miller piled into Rock’s car and headed off to Laguna Beach. While riding the waves in an oversized black inner tube (“like an ass”), Hudson was picked up by a giant swell, which dropped him (“like a match”) headlong onto the beach. His collarbone was broken. As he waited for the ambulance, Rock started sobbing—less because of the physical pain and more because he was terrified that the studio would recast his part.
“How long before it’s healed, doc?” Hudson asked the grave-faced bone specialist, who was hovering over him, looking unusually concerned.
“Hard to say, Rock. We’ll have to wait for X-rays. But I’m thinking eight to twelve weeks at the outside. You really ought to be in traction, son.”
Out of commission for nearly three months? Impossible. Universal would never delay the start of shooting for that long. Rock suddenly had nightmare visions of Tony Curtis taking possession of his role. Now, all of the time, effort, and energy he had spent working up to this moment may have been wiped out in a single afternoon.
“I called the studio in a panic. It was a plum role and a good chance for advancement for me,” Hudson recalled. “So many people at the studio went to bat for me when one of the executives wanted me replaced. The head of the studio, Bill Goetz said, ‘No, that part’s for him and he’s going to do it. Nobody else.’—which I loved.”
If the rumor mill is to be believed, there may have been some divine intervention from another corner of Universal’s administration building. Edward Muhl, who had just been promoted to vice president in charge of production, made an executive decision that single-handedly saved Rock Hudson’s career. “Without Muhl, Rock would have been dropped from Magnificent Obsession,” Mark Miller says. According to Miller, Muhl had fallen hard for Hudson and would occasionally meet with Rock behind closed doors for afternoon assignations. “Not true,” says Alexandra Muhl, Edward Muhl’s eldest daughter. “They never even socialized.”
Regardless of what went on (or didn’t) behind the scenes, Rock remained in the movie. “I did it with a broken shoulder,” Hudson told an interviewer. “I had a figure eight bandage on and it criss-crossed around behind my back . . . Poor Jane Wyman, we’d do these love scenes and the broken bone would creak and make her sick. But she kept right on as we were doing this love scene, you know. She gets a chevron for that.”
Even in 1953, when Rock’s remake went into production, Magnificent Obsession was already considered something of a warhorse. Back in 1929, Lloyd C. Douglas, a Congregational clergyman, had published a bestselling novel by the same name about redemption and the transformative power of anonymous philanthropy. The themes Douglas explored had originated with one of his own essays, the clinically titled “Personality Expansion through Self-Investment in the Philanthropic Rehabilitation of Others.” In other words, paying it forward. In adapting Magnificent Obsession, screenwriter Robert Blees wisely jettisoned several subplots, though he retained the essence of Douglas’s novel. However, even a streamlined version of the story read like an especially sudsy episode of The Guiding Light.
Spoiled, good-for-nothing playboy Bob Merrick is seriously injured when he crashes his speedboat. A resuscitator is used to save Merrick, which means it isn’t available to help another desperately in need of it. That would be Brightwood Hospital’s overworked chief, Dr. Wayne Phillips,* renowned as “the most important figure in the field of brain surgery on the continent.” A pillar of the community, Dr. Phillips has performed countless good deeds for those in need—though always anonymously.
After the saintly Dr. Phillips succumbs to a heart attack, Merrick attempts to absolve his guilt by paying off Phillips’s widow, Helen, with a sizable check. She rejects the offer and later, while fleeing from Merrick, she’s hit by a car and blinded. Merrick then meets spiritually attuned painter Edward Randolph (Otto Kruger), who teaches the young carouser how to establish contact with “the source of infinite power,” the same spiritual wellspring that had inspired the late Dr. Phillips to give to others so unselfishly. Soon after, Merrick introduces himself to an unsuspecting Helen as “Robbie Robinson,” and she immediately falls for the unusually attentive stranger.
Attempting to atone for his past transgressions, Merrick dedicates himself to becoming Helen’s “eyes,” by secretly financing several of her operations. In another act of redemption, he saves the cash-strapped Brightwood Hospital from bankruptcy. After completing medical school, Merrick becomes one of the world’s foremost neurosurgeons. Although he’s certified just in time to save a gravely ill Helen, Merrick is apprehensive. What if the surgery fails? Helen could die. After some encouraging words from Randolph, Merrick saves Helen’s life, restores her sight, and vows tha
t they will courageously face the future together.
It may have been totally improbable schmaltz, not to mention the saltiest of tearjerkers, but Magnificent Obsession was a blockbuster in whatever form it appeared. The first successful screen adaptation of the bestseller had been released by Universal in 1935. Robert Taylor, on loan-out from MGM, became a star by playing Bob Merrick. Could lightning strike twice? Universal was banking on it. Decades after it was produced, there would be a lingering debate about who first came up with the idea for a Rock remake of Magnificent Obsession. Several insiders were quick to claim credit.
Joseph Pevney, who had directed Rock in Iron Man, said that Universal’s chief, William Goetz, asked him to dust off the property. Douglas Sirk insisted that it was Jane Wyman who had first suggested a remake; the actress shrewdly recognized that playing a blind widow virtually guaranteed her a second Oscar. “Everybody has taken credit for Magnificent Obsession and I am here to say that I brought that idea to everybody at the studio and they all turned it down except William Goetz,” recalled producer Ross Hunter. “I said . . . ‘I believe this picture could make a star out of Rock Hudson. All you’re doing is putting him into action pictures and he’s not that type of boy. He’s a good-looking, clean cut man that young people all over the world will fantasize about.’”
Douglas Sirk wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. “My immediate reaction to Magnificent Obsession was bewilderment and discouragement,” Sirk recalled. “But still, I was attracted by something irrational in it . . . because this is a damned crazy story, if ever there was one.”
In what was an unusual move for the studio, Universal executives granted Sirk six weeks of rehearsal. Most of this time would be devoted to carefully molding Hudson’s performance. “Rock Hudson was not an educated man but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands,” Sirk would later comment. Although he had found a director he trusted, Hudson would also turn to his leading lady for guidance and support.
“Rock was new in the business and he was scared, of course, because we were in a big ‘A’ production now,” remembered Jane Wyman. “He wanted so much to learn. Rock was a sponge. He just sopped up everything and pigeonholed it and used it when he could. And by the end of the picture, he was a pro.”
Universal contract players Barbara Rush and Gregg Palmer were cast as Helen’s stepdaughter and beau. Like Hudson, Palmer was grateful that he had found his way into one of Universal’s rare prestige productions: “Rock and I were both scared as hell. We knew that we had to be on our game in Magnificent Obsession because there were some real heavyweights in that cast with Jane Wyman, Agnes Moorehead, and Otto Kruger. I was just starting out in the business and I was very taken with all of these people and their professional abilities. I know that some of my contemporaries had a very different experience with Sirk but I liked him and found it easy to work with him . . . I could see that he was very supportive of Rock and why shouldn’t he be? We all knew this was Hudson’s big chance . . . I mean, for him, this was sink or swim.”
Hudson was feeling the pressure so intensely that he came close to dropping out of the production. While on location at Lake Arrowhead, publicist Roger Jones was awakened with a distress call at one o’clock in the morning. It was a terrified Rock, who had talked himself into a full-blown panic attack. When Jones arrived at Hudson’s bungalow, he found the actor packing and ready to bolt. “I’m no actor . . .” Hudson muttered to himself, furiously digging at his fingernails. “I can’t do anything . . . I’m going to quit now . . . I’m going home . . . I’m going to get out of this business!” As he had done so many times before, Roger managed to calm Rock down, this time by launching into a discussion about the character Hudson would be playing.
As Jones recalled, “[Rock] began to relax a little, and laid down on the bed. I got the book out, sat down and started reading to him, so he could get the feel of this character. Finally, I realized he was asleep, so I unpacked his suitcases and hung everything back up. I picked up my shoes and went back to my own bungalow. It was three a.m. Somebody from the crew had seen me tiptoeing, as it were, out of Rock’s bungalow. The next morning, the propaganda had already started. I was supposed to be having an affair with Rock.” As the rumor mill had it, Hudson had seduced his married publicist in an effort to ensure that his star-making performance would get the extra attention it deserved. “It was all quite strained on the set,” Jones remembered. “Little did they know that Magnificent Obsession had lost its leading man for a while!”
From the first strains of the angelic chorus heard over the main titles to the final fade-out in a private sanitarium (one named Shadow Mountain, no less) Magnificent Obsession is part Sunday school lesson, part Harlequin romance. All perfectly insane. Wisely, Sirk doesn’t try to legitimize the story or attempt to make the plot seem more credible. Instead, he fully embraces the melodramatic lunacy, even as the story leaps from one completely implausible plot development to the next.
In Obsession, Ross Hunter finally presented Rock Hudson as the romantic idol that so many of his fans had fantasized about. “Women wanted to go to bed with him, to put it very crudely,” says film historian David Thomson. “I do not think that virtually any of them read or saw or felt the real Hudson that we now know existed off camera. To me, it’s the most interesting thing about him. Despite the fact that he’s this big, strong, awe-inspiring guy, there’s a gentleness and a tenderness about him. He has a very special relationship with the women in his movies and I think female audiences loved it.”
On the evening of May 11, 1954, Magnificent Obsession premiered at the Westwood Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Rock escorted Betty Abbott Griffin, while Jack Navaar was paired off with starlet Claudia Boyer. As the lights came up after the screening, there was no question that both the movie and its leading man had scored a triumph. “There was this great burst of applause, number one, but also this feeling of genuine excitement,” recalls Betty Abbott Griffin. “Everybody was pulling for him.” Except maybe Jack Navaar.
Instead of being allowed to sit alongside his own boyfriend, he was seated next to Ross Hunter’s boyfriend, designer Jacque Mapes. As Rock basked in the glory, everything felt stage-managed to Navaar. His “date” had been supplied by the studio. Even the tuxedo he was wearing had been borrowed from George Nader. At the post-premiere party at La Rue restaurant, Navaar made no secret of the fact that he was unhappy. When he and Rock finally met up at home later that evening, he laid into Mr. Hollywood: “You said we’d be sitting together. I felt like a fool. Like you’re the star and I’m the jerk!” Rock attempted to explain that Ross Hunter had rearranged the seating at the last minute, but Jack wasn’t buying it.
Once Obsession went into wide release, Hudson continued to receive widespread acclaim. The reviewer for the Los Angeles Examiner hailed Rock’s performance: “Released for the first time from formula two-fisted adventure and derring-do, Hudson proves himself an actor of unsuspected sensitivity and emotional maturity.” In the New York Journal-American, Jim O’Connor was equally enthusiastic: “At last, Rock Hudson has a part which permits him to do some acting. His is a fresh and not-too-maudlin approach . . . He plays Bob Merrick with conviction.”
The critical accolades offset the fallout from the scene Jack Navaar had made the night of the premiere. Up till then, Rock’s industry colleagues had done their best to look the other way where his private life was concerned. But now, to a certain degree, it had been dragged into the open and, suddenly, the knives were out.
One day, publicist Roger Jones overheard a director regaling his associates with tales of Rock and his “fairy friends” camping it up at a restaurant. “The director was saying Rock and a ‘couple of the boys’ were sitting in the booth next to him, raising all sorts of faggot hell. With that, I jumped into the group and said, ‘That’s a goddamned lie! He spent the evening with my wife and I at our apartment, playing the piano until two a.m., and if you don’t cut out this crap, I’ll spread some phony stories
about you, so knock it off.’”
But now the floodgates were open. One morning, Jones was pulled aside by Universal’s makeup supervisor Bud Westmore. “Bud was very anxious to talk to me,” Jones recalled. “He told me that a policeman friend of his in downtown Los Angeles had called to say that the studio had better do something about Rock Hudson, who was in jail at that moment on a homo charge. I told Bud that was impossible. [Rock] was home in bed.” When Jones reached Hudson by phone and relayed the news, the actor immediately knew what had happened: “‘That goddamned Henry—he’s in the cooler again on a homo charge, and he puts his name on the police blotter and then in large letters, “Rock Hudson’s Agent” and all they see is Rock Hudson.’ So I handed the phone to Bud . . . he apologized.”
IF MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION had been thoughtfully and meticulously designed as Rock Hudson’s breakthrough picture, his next film was nothing more than a formulaic adventure, a bit of period nonsense that Hudson was assigned to only after another actor had bowed out—and not just any actor, but a leading man that Rock stood in awe of and would consciously pattern his own career after.
Tyrone Power was set to star in Bengal Brigade, in which he was to have played a dashing British army officer attempting to prevent a Sepoy rebellion in nineteenth-century India. In July of 1953, Variety reported that Power was dropping out of the picture, citing too many professional commitments. Power’s full plate included the stage production John Brown’s Body, which two decades later would be revived for Rock Hudson, earning him some of the best reviews of his career. Bengal Brigade was another story. If the project had been tailor-made for Power, it was in some ways an ill-fitting hand-me-down for Hudson. While he could certainly handle the matinee idol heroics, Hudson had not yet cultivated Power’s grace or suavity.
