Hudson, Rock

Hudson, Rock (1925-1985), leading Hollywood actor. Born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., in Winnetka, Illinois, Hudson joined the navy on graduating from high school. His film debut, made two years after leaving the navy, in Fighter Squadron (1948), was inauspicious—he had only one line, but he managed to get it wrong 37 times.

Hudson worked his way up through a series of bit parts into larger roles in B-movies, where he was sold as “The Baron of Beefcake” because of his physique. Between 1952 and 1955 he made 14 films, 5 of them for Douglas Sirk. When it was realized that Hudson could play gentle and sensitive parts he took a new direction, playing supporting characters in pictures aimed at women. The first, a Texan cattle rancher in Giant (1956), the last film in which James Dean appeared, won him an Academy Award (Oscar) nomination as Best Actor. He was unable to build on this success, however. He made three more pictures for Sirk, then a series of comedies between 1959 and 1965, many with Doris Day. After that there were only standard war films, and finally television: most notably in a 1970s hit series called McMillan and Wife. Hudson’s death from an AIDS-related illness in 1985 brought wide media attention.