Week 108 (10/19/23): Hide in Plain Sight: the Life and Career of Rock Hudson

Roy Harold Scherer Jr. was born smack dab in the middle of both the Roaring 20’s and the country in Illinois, Thanksgiving of 1925.

Of all the gay and bisexual actors and actresses we’ve covered, Hudson was easily the most elusive and convincing in his career long presentation as a very straight screen idol and leading man. While known to many in Hollywood circles, his private life only came to public light over three decades into his career, when he was one of the earliest celebrities to openly discuss his being stricken with AIDS.

A naval veteran and strangely enough, a lifelong Republican and de facto Goldwater Girl (!) he pursued his dream of acting despite a pronounced and career long difficulty in remembering lines, being rejected from drama school and wasting no less than 38 takes to deliver a single line in his first onscreen role – a testament to his All American good looks and winning personality, to be sure.

After being signed to Universal, he was cast in several forgettable and forgotten cheesy period westerns, pirate and supposed adventure films before landing industry attention with his Oscar for the execrable James Dean/Elizabeth Taylor melodrama Giant.  But it was with his oddly fortuitous pairing with Doris Day and neurotic comic relief sideman Tony Randall in a series of fluffy and decidedly conservative romantic comedies at the end of the 1950s that he truly attained marquee leading man status.

Going on to star with Italian sex symbols Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale, as well as other attempts to replicate the Hudson/Day formula with lesser lights like Leslie Caron and Paula Prentiss, Hudson began to tire of these sort of light comedy roles, moving to television for the highly enjoyable and well remembered McMillan and Wife alongside the equally loveable Susan Saint James and gay icon (and Rosie the paper towel lady!) Nancy Walker 
for a several season, nigh-decade spanning run.  

His latter roles tended towards the decidedly idiosyncratic: John 
Frankenheimer’s existential paranoia opus Seconds, Alastair MacLean’s flawed if enjoyable Cold War spy film Ice Station Zebra, Roger Vadim’s sexploitation slasher/comedy Pretty Maids All In a Row, entertaining disaster epic Avalanche and the pensive meditation of a miniseries that was The Martian Chronicles.

So join us as we take on the All-American leading man who hid a surprising edge behind the surface veneer, the one and only Rock Hudson, only here on Weird Scenes!

Week 108 (10/19/23): Hide in Plain Sight: the Life and Career of Rock Hudson

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