Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

The Terrible Price I've Paid to Be A Star (Continued from page 38) ten per cent is taken out by Henry Willson, my agent, five per cent by my business manager, and sundry bits by lawyers and others. I spend up to my neck in insurance. I've been married, incorporated, and agented into so many pieces that I hardly know which of me belongs to myself. My marriage — to the executive secretary of my agent — began in November, 1955, and finally ended last year but not without a handsome settlement. The result of all this is that ten years of Hollywood have given me a small house, a 40-foot sail-boat (not a yacht), and about $50,000 clear — most of it invested in insurance bonds (I'm trying to get back a little of what I have paid out to the companies). As to my private, personal life, well, every week, in all sorts of publications, there are stories about me that are pure fabrications written by people I've never seen. I'm damned for planning to marry or not to marry; for being seen here or not being seen there. I tried to give a cute little girl some help in her career by reading lines with her — and instantly we were tagged as a romance. So now I just shut up about everything — including such titillating items as to whether I sleep raw, eat vitamins, or belch after a good meal. So, the writers hate me. I'm not a good interviewee. I clam up almost immediately. The result is that the writer has to guess who I'm in love with this Tuesday and why I eat yogurt on alternate Saturdays. Louella Parsons is different. She's always tried at least to get my side of a story. On one occasion, when I was roasted by an unfriendly gal-writer, she called me and said: "I just don't like that story, Rock. I don't think it's true." I said: "It isn't." So I sat down with her and unburdened myself and she wrote a piece that for once tried to defend me. Other writers have called me a "mechanical man," a big "kick-the-dirt" boy, and like to say that my acting is "pretty fair for an ex-truck driver." I used to be a truck-driver, sure — for six months in the early part of my career. I was a lot of other things, too, when I had to eat. But I've been an actor for ten years and, I hope, have made some improvements in the original. Some of this rubs off from the publicity stories handed out by the studio — where they even have me in the Navy as an airplane mechanic in the Philippines checking out a "four-engined" B-26 Marauder. The Marauder only has two engines and the fact is that when I was in the Navy I revved up the engine on one side so much that it chopped up a Piper Cub and I got assigned to the laundry detail. The other facts are that I was a member of a glee-club, sang in a church choir, and was a city mail-carrier — as well as the King of Hearts in a pageant at the age of ten and one of the three wise men in a Christmas pageant at eight. In those days I knew I couldn't act and I knew it fourteen years later when I met Henry Willson. I showed him my pictures and when he asked me if I could act I told him, "No." He told me that might be an asset and got me my first job at Warner Brothers, a one-liner as a fighter pilot that I managed to botch on half-a-dozen takes. "Look at the backbloard," I said again and again. As for publicity people — studio or otherwise— I feel a little suspicious about them. I realize they're needed, like a tire needs a bicycle pump. But I still get edgy when they come around: they're too smart and 76 exploitive. After all, I've had more than 2,000 fan magazine interview pieces — some real, some faked — and there's nothing more to be said about Rock Hudson. When even a spot of decay on a back molar becomes of interest to the general public, I retire into my shell. . . . About fans The perennial problem and the perennial lifeblood of any movie actor consists of his fans. I don't always expect to be cast as a romantic hero; ten years or so from now, when I look forty-five, I want to act forty-five, not eighteen. But it's hard to go to get a meal in a restaurant before the whispers and nudges begin — and finally the auograph fiends approach. Joel McCrea once told me that this is a modern development in movies. It never happened to those great old-time stars like Rudolph Valentino, for whom McCrea used to wrangle horses. The addicts of Valentino would mob him, tear his clothes — but they never asked him to sign anything. Strangely enough, the teen-agers are pretty wonderful about this. They are courteous, patient, and understanding. So are most men. But the women in their late forties are tough to deal with. Usually they come up to me just when I'm about to take a bite of steak. "Hi!" they say — and often they're slightly whiffed. "Hello," I say. "You don't have to be rude," they say. I explain that all I want to do is finish my meal — and that I'll be happy to sign anything but a blank check then. This makes them huffy. "Well," they say, "I was your fan," and march off. Most of the time they look back over their shoulder and declare: "The least you could do is smile at me." Other gambits are: "Here, sign this! You've got a pen, haven't you?" Or: "Don't think I'll go to see any more of your pictures!" The only recourse I have is a rather childish one: I often sign "Roy H. Fitzgerald" or I sign Rock Hudson backwards. . . . I've found out that being an actor can't be a nine to five job. My office is in my head. I'm not talking so much about relationships with fans, or learning lines or having to make personal appearances or going to parties. I'm thinking of the twenty-four hours a day, asleep or awake, when my consciousness is running over all the things I've seen and figuring out how I can use them. A word, an expression, a twist of the mouth, a lift of the eyebrow, the way to open a door and how to say "good morning," seven hundred different ways. I have to be aloof and participate at the same time. If I seem absentminded, it's usually because I'm trying to dig into a part to find the clues to a character — especially if it's a bad script. One of those was Twilight for the Gods. I didn't think the story — that of a sea captain plagued by a past mistake, slowly going insane with bells in the head and all that jazz — was any world-beater. But it was on the best-seller list. The script turned out worse than I feared. I didn't care about the character and apparently no one else did either. It might have been perfect as an Edward G. Robinson role but not for me. It even presumed that I was a full-fledged captain at the age of twenty-four. I asked the author why he had called it that and he said he just thought it was a good title. "I could have called it Twilight of the Gods," he said, "but a guy named Wagner had already used it so I changed it a little." When a script in itself fascinates me, I get the urge to try to add my bit to it. In Giant, I spent hours listening to dozens of records of Texas dialect. So did Jimmy Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. Liz's accent, if you listen, is a perfect soft Virginian at first and changes through the picture until at the end she is speaking pure Texas. My own talents at this altered the script of Pillow Talk. They got me to impersonate a Texas oilman with good comedy results because they knew I could do it. Friends and acquaintances The trouble with continual study of course, is that I tend to become a spy on people. I suppose I can claim fifty to a hundred acquaintances in Hollywood. They say I have millions of fans but actually I have only five close friends; a carpenter, a liquor salesman, a piano teacher, and one actor and one actress. They respect me as I am, not as a shadow on film or the invention of some columnist. My life is full enough to keep me from thinking about loneliness. I take singing lessons so that I can carry a tune outside a bucket and I'd like to do a Broadway musical sometime. I sail as much as I can, I study art, and I puzzle over investments. Someone else handles my money but I resent it. With me, money has become a personal thing. A business manager, I suppose, is necessary in Hollywood. I just don't know my way around in taxes, budgeting, bills, and the like. But I feel ashamed of myself for not knowing it. Eventually I want to learn this end of the business and handle myself by myself. I'm waiting with a good deal of anticipation the day when I turn forty-five or fifty and can move into the ranks of the character leads. This business of being the young romantic lover is not half what it looks like. The real challenge lies in the wonderful roles you can do until you're ninety-plus. I guess in the final analysis it's people who fascinate me. Being in movies has given me the chance to meet some really different ones. In each case, I turned out to be the clod. I was introduced to the Queen of England in 1951 in a long receiving line. I held her hand while she hoped I was enjoying my stay and would come again. "T-thank y-you," I stammered. I forgot to let go of her hand and she just waited and smiled until I let loose. I was amazed to see how much more beautiful she was than any pictures of her. I made another faux pas with Ingrid Bergman. I'd been a fan of hers for years and when I met her in Europe in 1956 at a party with twenty other people, I was paralyzed. She was very charming and chatted away while I was mum. Finally, just before she left, I blurted out: "You sure are tall." She said composedly: "So are you." Actually, I'm convinced, my six-feetfour is the chief reason I got my chance in pictures. Women always like a man they can look up to — it makes them that much more feminine. I was in demand from the beginning for the five-foot-six or -seven stars. And with a camera, in any scene, a taller man can actually dominate a scene from the beginning no matter how awkward an actor he may be. I have great respect for men like Laurence Olivier — whom I can call a friend— who can dominate any scene by sheer force of their personality. When I visit him, he's always very kind to me in spite of my two left feet. Working with real actors is always a delight. Tony Randall, for one, is fascinating to watch. What he does with a line is sheer magic to me. His expressions and