Rock Hudson

Rock Hudson (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr.; November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) was an American actor. One of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. A prominent heartthrob of the Golden Age of Hollywood, he achieved stardom with his role in Magnificent Obsession (1954), followed by All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Giant (1956).
Hudson also found continued success with a string of romantic comedies co-starring Doris Day: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964). During the late 1960s, his films included Seconds (1966), Tobruk (1967), and Ice Station Zebra (1968).
Unhappy with the film scripts he was offered, Hudson turned to television and was a hit, starring in the popular mystery series McMillan & Wife (1971 – 1977). His last role was as a guest star on the fifth season (1984 – 1985) of the primetime ABC soap opera Dynasty, until AIDS-related illness made it impossible for him to continue.
Numerous film magazines declared Hudson Star of the Year, Favourite Leading Man, and similar titles. He appeared in nearly 70 films and starred in several television productions during a career that spanned more than three decades.
Although he was discreet regarding his sexual orientation, it was known by many in the film industry during his lifetime that he was gay. In 1984, Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS. The following year, he became one of the first celebrities to disclose his AIDS diagnosis. Hudson was the first major celebrity to die from an AIDS-related illness, on October 2, 1985, at age 59, in Los Angeles, California.
The Oscar-nominated actor made a name for himself as a hunky leading man in romantic comedies, melodramas, and adventure film. Here we look back at 12 of his greatest films:

12. Darling Lili (1970)
This WWI musical epic was a huge flop when it hit theatres, making back just $5 million of it’s $25 million budget. Perhaps viewers were shocked to see Julie Andrews subvert her pristine image playing a German spy posing as a British showgirl. She uses her powers of persuasion to gain information from an American pilot (Hudson), but soon realizes she actually loves the guy.

11. Ice Station Zebra (1968)
Hudson often cited this Cold War thriller from John Sturges as the personal favourite of his long career. He plays the captain of a US nuclear submarine racing against a Soviet counterpart to retrieve a downed satellite buried beneath a polar ice cap. Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown round out the crew, who soon discover all is not as it first appears at Ice Station Zebra.

10. Send Me No Flowers (1964)
This was the last film Hudson made with squeaky-clean leading lady Doris Day and sardonic sidekick Tony Randall. Directed by Norman Jewison, it centres on a hypochondriac (Hudson) convinced he only has months to live. With the help of his best friend (Randall), he sets out to find a suitable new husband for his wife (Day) after he kicks the bucket. Yet she soon catches wind of his plan and assumes he’s covering for an affair he’s having.

9. Bend of the River (1952)
Hudson made an early film appearance in the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart western Winchester ’73 playing an American Indian (oh, how times have changed). He reunited with the director and star for a slightly bigger role in another exploration of the wild west, this one about a former outlaw (Stewart) working as a trail guide for a group of farmers travelling to Oregon who risks his life to bring confiscated goods back to the homesteaders. Hudson co-stars as a professional gambler the settlers encounter in Portland.

8. The Tarnished Angels (1957)
This adaptation of William Faulkner’s pessimistic novel casts Hudson as a journalist in 1930s New Orleans who runs across a former WWI flyer (Robert Stack) eking out a living as a barnstorming pilot. Hudson becomes fascinated by the fallen war hero, ingratiating himself in the man’s family and falling in love with his parachutist wife (Dorothy Malone).

7. Lover Come Back (1961)
Following the success of Pillow Talk, Hudson reunited with Doris Day and Tony Randall for another frothy screwball comedy. Directed by Delbert Mann, the film casts the pair as rival advertising agents fighting to land a lucrative account for a product that doesn’t actually exist. Their Madison Avenue rivalry soon turns to romance.

6. Magnificent Obsession (1954)
After years of slumming in B movies and supporting roles, Hudson shot to stardom with this Douglas Sirk melodrama. The film casts him as an irresponsible playboy who crashes his speedboat and needs emergency service from the town’s only resuscitator, at the very moment the kindly Dr. Philips suffers a heart attack. The beloved physician’s widow (Best Actress nominee Jane Wyman) refuses to forgive him, but when she’s blinded, he decides to do anything possible to help her.

5. Seconds (1966)
This science fiction thriller from John Frankenheimer bombed when it was released but has since gained a cult following. The film originally disappointed audiences with its paranoiac narrative and bleak ending. John Randolph (Hudson) stars as a middle-aged banker weary of his suburban life. When a mysterious company offers him the chance at a fresh start by faking his death and providing him with a brand new face, he jumps at it, only to soon regret the decision.

4. All That Heavens Allows (1955)
Hudson re-teamed with director Douglas Sirk and co-star Jane Wyman for another winking condemnation of upper class morals. The film centres on a middle-aged widow (Wyman) who falls in love with her much-younger gardener (Hudson), much to the consternation of her children and neighbours. Facing the ire of the country club crowd, she is forced to choose between true love and societal acceptance.

3. Pillow Talk (1959)
The film was the first of three movies Hudson made with Doris Day and Tony Randall, and it remains the highlight of their collaborations. Day earned a Best Actress nomination for playing an interior decorator that shares a telephone party line with a womanizing bachelor (Hudson). Though she can’t stand him, he decides to woo her by impersonating a Texas rancher, and deception soon leads to romance.

2. Written on the Wind (1959)
Trashed by critics but adored by audiences in their time, the melodramas of Douglas Sirk have found a resurgence in serious film circles, with their mix of gloss and satire. In Written on the Wind, his career-best work, a rich Texas playboy (Robert Stack) marries a beautiful woman (Lauren Bacall) who’s adored by his best friend (Hudson). He gives up drinking for his new wife; only to fall off the wagon when he finds out he’s impotent, thus driving her into Rock’s arms. Dorothy Malone won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Stack’s nymphomaniac sister, who lusts after his pal.

1. Giant (1956)
Most people remember Giant as the final entry in James Dean’s short career (it was released after his death in 1955). Yet George Stevens’ gargantuan adaptation of Edna Ferber’s epic novel is so much more than that. Hudson gives his best performance (and earned his sole Oscar nomination) as a Texas cattle rancher who travels to Maryland to buy a horse and returns with a wife (Elizabeth Taylor). Dean co-stars as a ranch hand that falls in love with Taylor before striking oil, sparking a rivalry between him and his boss that will last decades.

Seconds (1966)

Though its reputation has grown steadily since it bombed at the box office upon release, Seconds is one of those movies that has somehow held on to permanent cult status, a talisman passed between passionate enthusiasts, difficult for years to find at all on DVD.
Criterion has now come out with a Blu-Ray edition of Seconds loaded with extras which allows us to revisit this categorization-defying film, a horror-tinged thriller about aging, alienation, and the American belief in starting over.
Adapted by the screenwriter Lewis John Carlino from a novel by David Ely, Seconds tells the story of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), a sixty something banker who commutes each day between New York and his well-appointed suburban house in Scarsdale. From the opening scene – a trip through Grand Central Station shot with a curious dolly trick that makes Arthur seem to glide through the crowd of commuters like a rolling statue – we deduce that all is not well in this man’s inner world. Though he has a devoted wife (Frances Reid), a grown daughter, and to all appearances a perfectly pleasant existence, Arthur seems anxious and disconnected, his sweat-beaded face (and Jerry Goldsmith’s ominous score) communicating a degree of malaise that’s all out of proportion to the seemingly banal events of his day.
As it turns out, Arthur has been fielding late – night phone calls from an old friend, Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton), who he thought was dead. The man claiming to be Charlie convinces Arthur to visit a mysterious address in Manhattan, where – after being ushered through a meat locker full of suspended cow torsos – Arthur is ferried to the headquarters of a shady, never – named corporation. For the right price, he’s told, he can fake his own death and reinvent himself, changing not just his name and back story but his whole face and body via a radical surgical procedure.
That’s when the crazy gets kicked up a notch. Arthur, hesitating on the verge of such a major step, is persuaded to sign on the dotted line via a combination of corporate sweet – talk and outright blackmail. A subsequent conversation with a reassuring employee of the firm (Will Geer) oozes with incongruously folksy menace. Arthur winds up, half against his will, going under the knife – and when his face emerges from the mask of bandages a few scenes later, he’s become Rock Hudson.
The shift in protagonists from the jowly, balding Randolph to the 6-foot-4 uberhunk that is Hudson is almost as jarring to the audience as it is to the luckless Arthur – now known to the world as Antiochus “Tony” Wilson, a playboy painter with a house on the beach in Malibu.

Source: Dana Stevens, slate.com, goldderby.com and en.wikipedia