by David Bret
What nonsense. I recognise a Film Star when I see one. I can remember the early days of Robert Taylor, Ray Milland, Clark Gable and Gregory Peck, when a film star was a Film Star and not a transferred character from the stage. They came one size larger than life, had dark eyes, darker hair, and looked like—why, exactly like Mr. Hudson. There is no doubt about it: Mr. H is a star. I’d never seen him before: neither had the people round me.
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They didn’t know who the heck he was—but he was obviously something pretty terrific. They passed their programmes to be autographed, then puzzled over the signature. Then the mob of film fans in search of a prey grew to such terrifying proportions that Rock had to hide in the manager’s office…About his acting ability, however, Rock has some misgivings. “I don’t like myself on the screen. I can’t make love very well—I just go in and mash the make-up!” Never mind, Mr. Hudson. Were I fifteen years younger, I’d sigh for you anyway!
The real star of Anthony Mann’s compelling portmanteau of sibling rivalry is the infamous “one-in-a-thousand” perfect Winchester, the coveted prize in a Dodge City shooting contest—the legendary Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) would give his shooting hand to own one, we are told, and for such a trophy an Indian would sell his soul. The rifle is won by sharpshooter Lin McAdam (Stewart), who narrowly beats his opponent, Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally)—in reality, his brother Michael, who has killed his father. Brown steals the weapon and heads across the perilous Sioux country, where he loses it in a card game to Indian trader Joe Lamont (John McIntire), who ends up getting scalped by the chief, Young Bull. This is Rock, sporting pigtails, a false nose and war-paint, displaying a pleasing expanse of shaved chest and trying hard to hold in his stomach, and drawling his lines robotically with a distinct Midwestern twang—an on-screen participation which is lamentably brief before he is killed during a cavalry attack. Young Bull’s gun is subsequently found by a young officer (Tony Curtis in an early role, at around the time he appeared as an extra alongside Rock in I Was A Shoplifter), though it quickly
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ends up back in the hands of the evil brother until he is dispatched by the hero—who also ends up with the girl (Winters), the saloon trollop who has been passed from man to man like an unwanted parcel throughout the film.
Iron Man, directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Jeff Chandler and Evelyn Keyes, was another treat for gay fans, a “manly” tale of coalminers who become boxers after narrowly missing being buried alive, with the emphasis on fighting and not romance. Rock was not ordered to shave his chest, and one of the publicity shots of Tommy “Speed” O’Keefe, bare-chested and flexing his muscles before stepping into the ring for a ferocious bout with Chandler, sold thousands of copies to fans of both sexes.
Tommy always fights clean and is well-respected, whilst his friend Coke Mason (Chandler), bludgeons his way through each bout like a man possessed. The crowds flock to his fights to boo and hopefully witness him get his come-uppance. The film also has moments of gay innuendo and indeed a poorly camouflaged gay sub-plot, as usual scripted to go over the heads of cinemagoers, though fifty years on it is blatantly obvious that Tommy’s awe of the luckless Coke suggests that he might be interested in their friendship progressing beyond the platonic. “Ain’t he the sweetest player you ever saw?” he quips to a buddy, whilst they watch Coke panting and perspiring through a game of squash—in shorts so revealing that the Hays Office came close to ordering the scene to be cut. Later in the story, Tommy expresses his disinterest in the fairer sex when a bejewelled good-time girl tells him he is divine—a gay “buzzword” of the day. “I know, but I’m in training” he responds.
Iron Man resulted in Rock being seconded to Anthony Mann, who had directed Winchester ’73, but not shown much interest in
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him then. Mann (1906-67) was not an adherent of the popular “grit and spit” realism applied to Westerns at this time by directors such as Michael Curtiz and John Ford. His forte was the exploration of his characters’ psyches and innermost thoughts. It was Mann who, in Bend of the River, brought out the hitherto untapped hard streak in James Stewart. Gone was the soft-spoken, milk-drinking pacifist hero of Destry Rides Again, replaced by the tough, cynical and frequently ruthless frontiersman. Glyn McLyntock is the former borders raider who has escaped the hangman’s noose and is now scouting for a pioneers’ wagon-train which is heading towards a new life in Oregon territory. En route he rescues killer Garrett Cole (Arthur Kennedy) from a lynch mob, setting in motion a power struggle between the two that ends with the inevitable shoot-out. Rock played Trey Wilson, though viewing the film retrospectively, one wonders what all the subsequent fuss was about. Mann does not give him a great deal to do other than pose and pout, and it is not until the penultimate scene, when he is slightly wounded and loses the hat that has obscured his features for most of the film, that he captivates—his cheery smile lighting up an until now dull screen as he is comforted by leading lady Julia Adams before being reunited with his own sweetheart.
This one scene bore all the requisite ingredients to turn Rock into an overnight sensation. It was certainly applauded by the audience at the premiere in Portland, Ohio, the location of the film’s middle section, taking Henry Willson by surprise, for he had hired a team of “shriekers” to ensure that his protégé received as much female attention as possible. These mingled with the genuine fans outside the theatre just as the stars were on their way out, suddenly rushing forwards and chanting “We want Rock!” James Stewart was visibly shaken and offended that “this Chicago upstart” had stolen his thunder, and sulkily avowed that
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he would never speak to Rock again, let alone work with him. Rock was just as stunned to find himself surrounded by dozens of photographers and succumbed to an attack of nerves, nearly collapsed, and had to be escorted to his car by police officers!
Media hype, and not the genuine acting talent that would come later by way of confidence in his abilities, had placed Rock Hudson firmly on the ladder towards celluloid glory, but before progressing much further he was brought back to earth with a bump, as he explained to Ron Davis:
It went to my head. I was floating! I went back to the hotel that night and got drunk. I couldn’t sleep! I got up at the crack of dawn, went out in front of the hotel so the people on their way to work could see me, but no one recognised me. I took a walk, My picture was in the window of practically every store, beauty parlour, supermarket, cleaners and still no one recognised me…Nobody knew who I was! It was sad, but I learned a great lesson. Mob scenes and cheering fans don’t mean a damned thing. It’s temporary. If you try to grab on to it, you get nothing but air in your hands.
Rock’s next film, Scarlet Angel, set in 1860s New Orleans and directed by Sidney Salkow, was almost a precursor of his later, more widely acclaimed comedies, though one assumes the humour to have been unintentional. Rock played “Panama” Truscott, captain of the Atlantic Star. The Scarlet Angel of the title is not the hard-bitten Roxy McClanahan (Yvonne de Carlo), but the tawdry saloon where she works…and which has as a central feature the celebrated Toulouse-Lautrec poster of the music-hall star Aristide Bruant, twenty-five years before it was painted!
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“The gambling is as crooked as the gals,” one of the locals says as Panama heads for the joint, where fighting and whoring are in full swing. Roxy’s employer pays her to fleece the customers, and this particular one has a lot of money to be parted from, having just arrived in town with a valuable coffee cargo. Her trick is to match her victims drink for drink—though her “whisky” is nothing but weak tea—and, once they are drunk, lift their wallets. Whilst she is trying to con Panama, the sheriff turns up to arrest her for a previous misdeed: having sussed her out, Panama instigates a brawl. To say more would be to spoil the film for those who have not seen it.
Scarlet Angel was a corker of a film and, though American critics were far from enthusiastic, in Britain the Daily Mirror’s Donald Zec
deemed it the most exciting production he had seen in months. Zec was so impressed that he dubbed Rock “Mr. Beefcake”, a nickname he kept for most of his life. The two men eventually met and became friends. During the summer of 1952, the columnist observed:
Today’s Hollywood looks at the man first, the muscle next, the mind last. Beefcake! That bulging expanse above the masculine waist is being howled for by the she-wolves, so it’s being rounded up all over the place! The bobby-soxers wolf-whistled at Tony Curtis. They were ecstatic over Burt Lancaster. But now there’s a boy they’ve stripped to conquer all. The studio says he’s going to make a fine actor, but at the moment most of his talent is in his torso.
Rock’s closest friends at this time—they would still there at the end of his life—were Mark Miller and George Nader. Aged twenty-five and thirty respectively, the pair had become lovers in
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1947 when Nader (Giorgio Nardelli, 1921-2002) had been a struggling actor and Miller an operatic tenor in a Broadway chorus line. Nader had appeared in several minor films before hitting the big time in 1952 with Monsoon. Muscular, hirsute and every bit as good-looking at Rock, though lacking his innate charisma and raw sex appeal, he nevertheless enjoyed considerable success on the big screen over the coming decades, reaching mass audiences in the Ellery Queen television series (1975) which resulted in Miller giving up his own career to manage that of his partner.
The couple had taken to Rock at once, though initially, like Bob Preble, they had been dismissive of some of his personal habits. For some time he had owned just the one suit bought for him by Ken Hodge, and as this was only brought out of mothballs for important occasions, much of the time Rock turned up at his pals’ house in Studio City wearing old, frequently soiled clothes they would not have been seen dead in. Nader also complained about Rock’s habit of never wearing socks, and his body odour—when asked why he never used deodorants, he responded truthfully that he had been brought up to believe that such things were only for “sissies”.
These problems were resolved and the trio spent much of their spare time together. Rock said of Miller, “He’s my man Friday. He makes me laugh. He’s my best friend, drunk or sober. I couldn’t exist without Mark Miller.” Of Nader he enthused, “I can trust him to tell the truth. George is always right.”
Socialising in an extremely prejudiced Hollywood, where it was the norm for actors to have mistresses and even be involved with organised crime, but denounced as deviants if they were gay, the three friends never aroused suspicion, not even from those hacks whose aim in life was tracking down anyone who stepped out of line yet who were sufficiently naïve to believe that
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three men having a good time out on the town could not be anything but pals. Even so, for the rest of his life Rock would never be knowingly photographed alone with a good-looking man—and at home, the man he was living with was never allowed to stand near the window, or answer the door or telephone.
At weekends, the friends piled into Rock’s convertible and drove to Lake Arrowhead, usually with Bob Preble or one of Rock’s pick-ups making up a foursome, where they stayed in log cabins safe from the prying eyes of the media. Alternatively they visited the men-only beach in Malibu where nude bathing was allowed—and where Rock was frequently mistaken for a gay-basher on account of his size and being so overtly butch. Sexual freedom was severely restricted to such locations and relatively free from media intrusion. Though when working, closeted homosexual heart-throb actors—then as today afraid of being exposed not just on account of the public backlash, but of the knock-on effect this would have on their and the studio’s bank balance—were compelled to meet studio bosses halfway and allow publicists to fix them up with “beards”, or arranged dates. Such protection was of paramount importance to permit big earners such as Rock and Cary Grant to live virtually open lives with their male lovers—“buddies” who upon the slightest whiff of suspicion invited the press into their homes, so that the news could be relayed to fans how these red-blooded, eligible bachelors really lived—perpetually surrounded by starlets, and always holding pool or barbecue parties.
Only rarely did anyone slip up. One such occasion was when Rock was asked to contribute to Ivy Crane Wilson’s Hollywood Album: The Wonderful City & Its Famous Inhabitants, a popular and nowadays immensely collectible 1950s film album for which gross sycophancy was the order of the day. Bob Preble answered
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the door, when Wilson’s assistant turned up before the appointed time to write Rock’s “autobiography”. Rock told the young woman that his friend’s name was Tom Preble, and that they were sharing the house—an admission that made it to the printed page, though Rock’s description of his easy-going existence and his boastful aspirations for the future managed to allay even the suspicions of some of Wilson’s less gullible readers:
My present routine: a drive to the beach, a visit with some friends, or staying at home listening to records or playing the old-fashioned Pianola some pals gave me for my birthday. My ambition is for pictures with a punch, such as Red Dust, Too Hot To Handle, Honky Tonk. The height of success to me would be the chance to play a Rhett Butler, to achieve the status of a Gable…I’d be hypocritical if I denied that I’m looking forward to the security that goes with being a successful star. Some day I hope to be having a look at the South Seas from the deck of a luxury liner—not through a Navy porthole. I’ll rate that swimming pool and a specially built convertible but no matter how swanky the house there’ll be room for my prized Pianola. Best of all, maybe, I’ll have a wife to share the fun. Then all the dreams I had in Winnetka will become realities.
For several months, Rock’s regular studio-date was MGM dancer Vera–Ellen (1921-81), an effervescent blonde who had recently scored a success in On The Town, and whose publicity read that she was considerably older than Rock—at thirty-on she was just four years his senior. This was Henry Willson’s idea, his theory being that if the scandal was created that Rock was having an affair with an “older woman”, this would take the heat
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off questions being asked in some quarters as to why he was living in a one-bedroom house with another man.
Rock was almost caught out when a journalist saw him driving away from the gay beach in Malibu in the middle of the night, after which Henry Willson offered a compromise: If Rock really wanted a break from Bob Preble, then instead of prowling the night in search of sex, he would provide him with the pick of his stable-studs. Rock refused to have anything to do with the idea. Procuring bed mates, he told his manager, was an art form he had perfected, and the thrill was in the chase—though in his case he did not have to try too hard to have conquests flinging themselves into his arms. He declared that he would be taking a man to the annual Hollywood Press Photographers’ Ball—having learned that Rudolph Valentino had taken his “husband”, André Daven, to a similar event back in 1926. Fortunately, Willson persuaded him to change his mind, and he took Vera-Ellen instead.
The “couple” made a spectacular entrance as Mr. and Mrs. Oscar, dressed in skimpy bathing suits and painted gold from top to toe. Columnist Hedda Hopper’s arch rival, the equally fearsome Louella Parsons, had been asked to broadcast a live radio programme from the ball, and it did not take her long, once she had interviewed “the happy couple”, to spread the rumour that Hollywood would soon be hearing wedding bells.
Vera-Ellen may have been Rock’s “fiancée” for the evening, but someone else caught his eye at the ball—one of his idols, Tyrone Power, thirty-six and in his dark, handsome prime. The two fell for each other at once, but are not believed to have had an actual affair. Though insistent that his lovers should be blue-eyed blonds, Rock might have made an exception but Power was apprehensive about starting anything with an actor who, as a relative unknown could easily fall by the wayside, need the cash,
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and sell him down the river. In the spring of 1953, by which time he was a household name and considered “s
afe” in Power’s eyes, Rock would go to see him on stage in the New York production of John Brown’s Body, and the two would spend a little time together—though with Bob Preble hovering in the background their friendship is believed to have progressed no further than mild flirtation. Not having Tyrone Power wake up next to him in the morning is said to have been one of Rock’s biggest regrets.
Rock’s next few films were not memorable, though the parts were getting better, and an increase in salary enabled him to move home—three times in as many years when he was with Bob Preble—and to acquire, courtesy of Universal, some of the luxuries expected to be afforded the movie star, so long as he toed the line. Some years later, in a rare in-depth interview with the film critic David Castell, he observed:
What Katharine Hepburn said about MGM in the 1930s was still true of Universal in the 1950s. Nothing was allowed to get in the way of the performance. If you wanted a new driver, a new house—anything—they would take care of it. Also, you were paid 52 weeks a year whether or not you worked. Mind you, the studio wanted their pound of flesh. Chances were that if you were under contract, you would work.
The critics agreed that Rock’s best performance at this time was as Dan Stebbins in Douglas Sirk’s Has Anybody Seen My Gal? released in the summer of 1953. Its star was 75-year-old Charles Coburn, described by David Quinlan as, “An actor whose paunch, monocle, cigar and thick lips lent superb character to a series of lovable but perceptive upper-class gentlemen with hoarse voices and hearts of pure gold.” Coburn is Sam Fulton, an