Modern Screen (Dec 1952 - Nov 1953)

recently, and whenever I know I'm going to spend an evening with Rock I get in a happy mood even before he comes to call for me. He's so crazy — you never know what he's going to do next. He can't sit still for two minutes and spends the evening bouncing, whether it's in his seat at a premiere, or bowling along in his car from one place, to the other. When he laughs you can hear .it for blocks, and you can't help laughing with him. He isn't the smooth, polished type of escort. I remember one time he brought me an orchid corsage, and he handed it to me as though he were passing the salt. "Here," he said, and started to riffle through a magazine on the coffee table. He's much more at ease when he gives me silly little presents, like the stuffed bunny he brought over Easter morning, or the goony little doll at Christmas. He's an awful tease and if he ever gets something to hold over you, he won't let you forget it. One time he and I went to a movie on Hollywood Boulevard and when we came out of the theater and were walking toward the parking lot, I felt something tickling the back of my legs. My petticoat had decided to leave me and in less than a second it fell in a heap around my feet. As nonchalantly as I could I stepped out of it and picked it up and put it in my purse, but I needn't have bothered to be so ladylike. Rock was bent double laughing at me, the big goon, and so many people were turning to stare that I had to beat a hasty retreat away from the scene. Since then, he's never failed to remind me of it whenever I make any effort at being glamorous. He's unusually observant of people and quickly notices little habits or manners of speech. A mutual friend of ours, for example, has an absent-minded way of counting things. It might be the slats in a Venetian blind or the links in his key chain, and I don't think he realized it himself until Rock began imitating him one day. A publicist at the studio gets knots in her stomach if anybody closes one eye and leaves the other wide open. Rock discovered it, and if he's in a room when Betty walks in, there's always this one great eye staring at her. He's such a tease. He kids me about my habit of puckering my mouth when I'm thinking, and every once in a while, out of the blue, he'll say, "Make a bunch for me"— his way of describing the pout. A date with him is always sure to be fun. There's never any shop talk, and he's a wonderful dancer. Best of all, when I'm with Rock I have a wonderful sense of security. He's still like a big brother I have a feeling that if I ever had any big problem I could go to Rock and he'd do everything he could to help me. I'll even go so far as to say that, if it were necessary, he d swing a few punches in my behalf. I think he'll always be one of my favorite people. By BETTY ABBOTT ■ I have to introduce myself first. I'm what is known as a script girl, in which capacity I stand by while a movie is shooting and watch details like a hawk looking for chickens, however small. For instance, if an actor is doing the same sequence today that he worked in yesterday, I have to make sure he wears the same tie and has a bruise on his cheek the same place it was when scenes, were shot yesterday. Script girls usually bounce from one actor to another in succeeding pictures, but Fate picked on me to work with Rock Hudson in eight consecutive pictures. I got to know him pretty well on the set, and after a while found myself spending evenings with him every now and then. These aren't hard to take, except that I never know where I'll land. He gives me no information whatsoever, and I'm just as likely to end up on a merry-goround 50 miles away as I am on the dance floor at the Mocambo. As a result, I try to dress in what might be called casual clothes that can take anything from a tango to a trapeze. Once in a while we take in a movie, and if Rock happens to be in it he agonizes through the whole thing. He squirms so much that he makes me nervous and I might as well see it alone. Half of them I have to go see again, thanks to Hudson. With all his wackiness, Rock has beautiful manners. They're the innate kind of attentions that well-mannered men do unconsciously. Even if I'm wearing blue jeans and have just whomped up a sensational bowling score. Rock is right there to hold open the car door for me. A lot of people around town could take lessons from him on this. Mother and I have a house on the hill opposite the place where Rock lives now, and the character has availed himself of a pair of binoculars. He swears he uses When Rita Hoyworth began her career, she was about the ugliest of all the starlet ducklings who ever came to Hollywood. The casting director who first signed her was considered out of his mind. When the studio bosses looked at her,, they were far from impressed. One executive said, "This girl is about as attractive as my maiden aunt, age 56." This remark upset a girl hairdresser and she went to Rita, who was in tears. "What you need, honey," the girl told Rita, "is a remodeling job." So Rita went into hock — and for what? For an electrolysis treatment. One week and $1,200 later, she was a raving beauty. Almost three inches of hair had disappeared between her hairline and her lush eyebrows. Now Rita had a high hairline and a solid bit part in a film called Susan And God. Today studio executives shudder to think they almost lost Rita by a hairsbreadth! Carl Sckroeder them on our apartment and I guess he does sometimes, because he's often kidded me about the time I got home the night before with some other guy. He's a real joker, but a lovable one. My mother thinks he's the last word in the new generation. No wonder. When he comes over for dinner he likes to help her putter around in the kitchen (sometimes he eats half the food while he's at it), and one night he washed down the kitchen walls for her. We'd planned to go to a show but began howling at some old wardrobe pictures I had around the house, and pretty soon it was too late for a movie. So he got the ladder and a bucket of suds and spent a couple of hours until the job was done. Then he surveyed it with a critical eye and said, "You know, those walls need painting." When Rock says something like that you know he's going to do it. It may not be this year, mind you but nevertheless that kitchen is going to get painted by Hudson. He teases my mother about anything he can think of, mostly her name, which is the unlikely combination of Olive Victoria. "Ollie," he says, "I've been practicing my golf swing up on the hill at my place and I've been aiming for your kitchen window. But I can't seem to make it." Mother thinks he's the bee's knees, or whatever they called likable young men in her day. He and I have a gag about names, the crazier the better. When he was in England he sent letters to my home addressed to such assorted characters as Miss Sydenham Klunk, or Ubaldo Umbrellus or Igor Bodkin— anything but Betty Abbott. I give as much as I take on this score, but it's our own joke and whenever I find crazy notes in my typewriter at the studio addressed to Lavinia or Elspeth, I know who they're from beyond a doubt, without any researching. A while back I mentioned his fondness for food, and while I do not wish to needle Mr. Hudson, I would mention in passing that when we were on location in Oregon for The Bend Of The River I sat next to him at the table and with my own eyes saw him put away 3 (three) T-bone steaks. As it is, I hardly ever get a square meal when I join him for dinner because he eats half of mine. In contrast to his clowning, he is quite shy with strangers and has extraordinarily good taste in a quiet way. He brought me a lovely black lace mantilla from Europe and a huge bottle of his favorite perfume, Blue Hour. He notices little things that most men don't, and it is on his suggestion that I put polish on the inside of my nailtips, which I wear quite long. I think Rock's greatest appeal, at least to me, is his sincerity in whatever he does. He is a very real person, without a phony thought in his head. I've never heard him say an adverse word about anybody; unless he has something nice to say, he doesn't say it. And because of this, it's pretty difficult to find anything wrong with him. There's plenty to kid about, but nothing to criticize. By MARCIA HENDERSON ■ I guess I met Rock just in time. I've been in Hollywood only a short time, and until I met him I was beginning to think I'd never meet anybody out here with whom I could find a basis for real conversation. I come from a college town back in New England, and I grew up with books and with people who have retained the almost lost art of conversation. When I started work in Back To God's Country, I met Rock for the first time. I knew, of course, that he was an established star and a single man who is quite popular around town, so I never dreamed that here was the one person who could give me point for point in a serious discussion. It all started one day on the set when we began talking about the picture's title, and before I knew it the chatter had evolved into a conversation about religious and spiritual concepts. I couldn't have been more surprised. Rock appears to be such a gay blade — people probably think he hasn't a brain in his head — and here he was, touting the ancient philosophers like a professor back home. That was less than three months ago, but since then we've had a lot of lengthy discussions. We don't see eye to eye, but I enjoy it just the same and am delighted to at last have a communion of minds with someone. We argue all the time, because I'm more familiar with the modern philosophers like Kant and Schopenhauer, while Rock has steeped himself in the ancients. He dislikes what he calls cynical modernism and has me so curious about his own favorites that I find myself digging into the old Hebraic and Buddhist writings. Currently he has me interested in the Hindu Scriptures, the Gita, which is sort of a correlative of the Sermon on the Mount It's one of his pets,