![]() He would later praise his co-star Jane Wyman for being “so kind and patient.” Mind you, she must have been used to duff actors – she’d been married to Ronald Reagan! The future president and Hudson were close friends, as was Ronnie’s second wife Nancy.Įarly in his career, in an effort to make his voice deeper, he has surgery on his vocal chords. It didn’t bode well – legend has it that his nerves got the better of him and it took 38 takes for him to get his only line correct! The problem cropped up again in 1954’s Magnificent Obsession – some scenes needed to be reshot up to 40 times. His first role was in the 1948 war movie Fighter Squadron. His screen test for Twentieth Century Fox was so bad, that the studio showed it to young actors for decades as an example of how, through hard work, however badly you can start out, you can still become a star. Rock took five screen tests at different studios before signing with Universal. He reportedly took toys away from young Roy that he believed were effeminate, and tried to squash the young man’s dreams of acting. Rock didn’t like his physically abusive, alcoholic stepfather. ![]() It was talent agent Willson who came up with the name ‘Rock Hudson’, by combining the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River – a name the star is said to have hated. He disliked Universal Studios’ idea of ‘Roc’ even more. He was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr, later taking the name Roy Fitzgerald, when his mother – a telephone operator – remarried after his father, a car mechanic, walked out on the family. “And he said: ‘I can’t fire him because he threatened to have one of his boys throw acid in my face if I ever fired him, and I knew he would do it’.” ![]() In All That Heaven Allows, Griffin reveals Rock’s reason for not changing agents. “I said to him: ‘Why don’t you fire the sonofabitch?’” Hudson’s boyfriend Lee Garlington recalled asking. When Confidential magazine threatened to out Hudson, Willson sacrificed Hunter, giving them secrets about him and another of his clients instead. Others claimed he actually blackmailed a young Rock about some of his secrets.Īmong Willson’s other clients were the bisexual star of Dallas and All My Children, Dack Rambo, and another gay “beefcake” Tab Hunter. I’m putting it nicely.”Īccording to Rock’s biographer, Mark Griffin, the gay actor Roddy McDowall was equally as blunt, saying: “ was like the slime that oozed out from under a rock you did not want to turn over.” Willson, who was also gay, was a thoroughly unpleasant man and most of his clients – all young men – found themselves on his “casting couch”. Actor Tony Curtis is quoted as saying: “Everybody who went with him had to sexually express himself to Henry. Then, in 1990, there was a TV film about his sham marriage.Īnd this year, Kelly Clarkson’s Chemistry album has a track simply entitled Rock Hudson. Since then there have been biographies, more newspaper stories, wild – and sometimes true – rumours about him, as well as documentaries and dramas such as Ryan Murphy’s mini-series, Hollywood. The Emmy-Award-winning Netflix show starred Jake Picking as Rock and The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons as his scummy first agent, and talent scout, Henry Willson.īig Audio Dynamite even had a song linked to him on their debut album the same year he died, called Stone (instead of Rock) Thames (instead of Hudson river). His death, according to Friends and Falcon Crest actress Morgan Fairchild, even “gave Aids a face”.
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