Hollywood (Jan - Oct 1934)

Art is the Bunk! Rochelle. Hudson had a long-term movie contract at thirteen Rochelle Hudson, headed for stardom at seventeen, has her own ideas about fame and glory ! by BEN MADDOX No Matter How much success lies ahead for Rochelle Hudson, she's quite made up her mind that she won't get hot 'n' bothered about it! Seventeen and turned sensational in both looks and ideas, she is pleased, naturally, to find herself awarded a Fox contract and to be told that next she's to be the love interest in Warner Baxter's Odd Thursday. But as for Hollywood fame — ? "It's a little late to become excited over my career," she declares. (And she is only seventeen!) "I'm glad to be in the money. Yet I refuse to be dazzled by the prospect of stardom. The glamour's okay so long as there's the weekly pay-check. Yearning, however, to 'die in the harness?' Oh, my for this baybee! Rochelle, who affects a snappy Clarabowish attitude when her dignified mother isn't on guard, shrugged a provocative shoulder, rolled her alluring blue-grey eyes, and grimaced cutely with her generously rouged lips. She comes from a good family and she's a nice gal, but — lordy! — how she fears being thought gaga! "Art," she opined laconically a la Mae West, "is the bunk!" Nevertheless, she's been taking lessons to improve her native talents ever since she can remember. "My mother," she explains, "is one of those persons who believe you should develop whatever ability you have. Now me, I'm lazy. I have to be pushed. If mother didn't keep on my trail, I wouldn't be here! I feel so sorry," she added, "for grown-ups who have to learn voice, and dancing, and all those things. I'm thankful I had it all pounded into me while I was too young to suffer!" • Clad in a smart woolen suit of a vivid green hue and topped by a saucy black satin chapeau, she sat opposite me in the Fox restaurant. Rochelle is no longer the demure miss who was under contract to Radio. She languished in the background there and she's tired of being neglected. So she's acquired a pseudo-sophistication (of the Bow type) that, she hopes, will cause her to appear older and, therefore, eligible for more forceful parts. Fox was so impressed with her work in Doctor Bull that they put her under long-term contract. The studio is highly enthused and predicts much for Rochelle. FEBRUARY, 1934 -!" None o' that But here's a laugh! In the biography Fox has prepared on her, they state that she came to Hollywood in 1930 to crash "pitchers," direct from Claremore, Oklahoma, the old 'iome town of Will Rogers. "You can see why I take this business with a grain of salt," she said to me as she related the true story of her career to date. "What I'm revealing here will be news to the boys at Fox! "Actually, I began on this very lot the first part of 1930. I was signed to a long-term contract by Fox," Rochelle divulged, "when I was thirteen!" • "But we'd better go further back than that to straighten out the Hudson history. I was born in Claremore, yes. But I didn't grow up there for, when I was a baby, my parents moved to Oklahoma City. There has been considerable publicity about my being a protegee of Will Rogers, since I was born in Claremore. "To be accurate, he's been kind to me, but not extraordinarily so. I've only seen him on the sets and I've never met any of his family. Mother had known him years ago. but I never met him until I was cast in Doctor Bull." Rochelle's father, who is running a big wheat ranch in Kansas at present, was head of the Federal Employment Bureau in Oklahoma City for years. She was an only child and her mother, who had dreamed of acting, saw that she studied dancing, the piano, painting, and the allied arts. She attended a private school. "When I was eleven my father had a nervous breakdown Please turn to paf?e forty-nine 23