Although he made his debut at Warners, in Raoul Walsh's Fighter Squardon (48). he was really the product of Universal. He begun with bit parts and supports: Undertow (49, William Castle); an Indian in Mann's Winchester 73 (50); The Desert Hawk (50, Frederick de Cordova); Fregonese's One Way Street (50); in 1951• Air Cadet and Iron Mask for Joseph Pevney and Bright Victory for Mark
Robson. He grew into longer parts in a series of adventure and B pictures. In the space ot
three years, he worked as often as possible in Hollywood's last great profusion of adventure
excitement: 1952—Bend of the River (Mann); Scarlet Angel (Sidney Salkow); Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk); and Horizons West (Budd Boetticher); 1953—Seminole (Boetticher); Sea Devils (Walsh); Back to God's Country (Pevney); Gun Fury (Walsh); and Bengal Brigade (Laslo Benedek); 1954-55—four films for his perceptive patron, Douglas Sirk: Taza, Son of Cochise; Captain Lightfoot; Magnificent Obsession; and All That Heaven Allows.
Sirk had seen that, despite so many escapades, Hudson was innately gentle and sympathetic. Thus he began a new career as a sustaining figure in women's pictures. He sur- j
prised many people with his quiet authority in George Stevens's Giant (56) and worked three
more times for Sirk: in Battle Hymn (57) conventionally, but in Written on the Wind (56) and The Tarnished Angels (57) exceptionally.
In the latter, the drunken reporter is one of his better performances and a sign of depths that were never fully explored.
After Richard Brooks's worthy Something
of Value (57) and a respectable Frederick
Henry in the Selznick-Charles Vidor A
Farewell to Arms (57), he became embroiled
with Ross Hunter and usually Doris Day or
Gina Lollobrigida in a number of comedies
that bridged the gap between gaiety and permissiveness, largely through innuendo. They
were uneasy films, but they were very successful, and at last Hudson was proved in
comedy: Pillow Talk (59, Michael Gordon);
Come September (61, Robert Mulligan);
Lover Come Back (61, Delbert Mann); Send
Me No Flowers (64, Norman Jewison);
Strange Bedfellows (65, Panama/Frank); and
A Very Special Favor (65, Gordon). Between
times, he made a few offbeat failures: The
Last Sunset (61) for Aldrich, The Spiral Road
(62) for Mulligan, and A Gathering of Eagles
(63) for Delbert Mann. His best comedy by
far is Hawks's Man's Favorite Sport (64), as
memorably beset by Paula Prentiss as ever
Grant was by Hepburn, and admirably clutching at the flawed calm of the angling authority
who has never caught a fish.
After that, Hudson made no worthwhile
films: he was uneasy as the hero in Frankenheimer's pretentious Seconds (66); unable to
do better than some slack war films and tame
comedies: Tobruk (67, Arthur Hiller); John
Sturgess Ice Station Zebra (68); The Undefeated (69, Andrew V. McLaglen) with mustache and John Wayne; the dreadful Darling
Lili (69) with Blake Edwards and darling
Julie; Phil Karlson's Hornet's Nest (69); mustachioed and portly in Vadim's Pretty Maids
All in a Row (71), in which he seemed placidly
amused at the chance of grappling with so
many naked adolescents. In fact, Vadim
neglected the comic potential of Hudson as a
cool, campus Bluebeard.
In 1975, at fifty, Hudson faced a
crisis: without good comedies he might dwindle into such TV series as MacMillan and
Wife. The crisis proved much greater.
MacMillan was a hit on TV, and Hudson made
few worthwhile films: Showdown (73, George
Seaton); Embryo (76, Ralph Nelson);
Avalanche (78, Corey Allen); The Mirror
Crack'd (80, Guy Hamilton); as a movie director in The Star Maker (81, Lou Antonio) bedding all the starlets; as the President in World
War III (82, David Greene); The Ambassador
(84, J. Lee Thompson); and as a casino owner
in The Vegas Strip Wars (84, George
Englund).
Hudson was reluctant to admit that he had
AIDS—who could blame him? Hollywood
remains in conflict over any admission of
homosexuality. But Hudson became the first
famous victim of AIDS in movies, and everything he ever did became recast or reappraised in the light of the tragedy. Books said
his marriage had been arranged to avert scandal. At the very least, the vaunted, rocklike
masculinity of great male stars moved closer
to the light. The rocks, sometimes, are cardboard shapes moved around by props people.
