How Rock Hudson became Hollywood’s square-jawed prince of 1950s melodrama

After a six-year run in noirs, westerns, comedies and adventure yarns, sometimes as the lead, sometimes in support, Magnificent Obsession (1954) was the 26th film in which Rock Hudson appeared. It was the first to make him an unimpeachable movie star, as well as the swoonily handsome figurehead of the 50s melodrama.

Magnificent Obsession’s plot presents melodrama at its most gloriously romantic and nonsensical. Hudson is playboy Bob Merrick. Because of a reckless speedboat accident, he has his neighbour’s defibrillator when that neighbour needs it for a flare up of his heart condition. Without it, he dies, leaving Helen (Jane Wyman) widowed. Bob feels guilty, yet his desperation to atone causes another accident that blinds Helen. Subsequently, he pretends to be ‘Robbie Robinson’, with whom she falls in love. Bob then becomes a brain surgeon in order to save both her sight, and ultimately, her life.

The movie was Douglas Sirk’s third collaboration with Hudson, but it was the first to crystalise their cinematic bond. Despite stiff competition, the plot was perhaps the most separated from reality of the entire nine-film Sirk/Hudson oeuvre – which is why it proved such an excellent showcase for Hudson’s particular screen power.

The textbook image of ‘tall, dark, and handsome’, Hudson looked like he’d been magicked to life from the cover of a romance novel. There was a sturdiness to him that was both innate to his square-jawed face and broad 6ft 4 frame, and there by design. He was actually born Roy Scherer Jr, with ‘Rock Hudson’ being a name chosen for him by his notorious agent, Henry Willson, to evoke the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River.

And of course, while he was one of the best loved onscreen womanisers of the 1950s, Hudson was gay. Though audiences during his melodrama heyday weren’t aware, watching today that knowledge adds another dimension to his supremacy in a genre known for its tackling of societal prejudice and dramatic plots often centred around secret identities.

In any other genre, Hudson’s near-cartoonish handsomeness risked becoming distracting, but within the heightened world of melodrama it provided a solid, authoritative frame for hanging the flimsiest of narratives. In Magnificent Obsession, he (effectively) kills a woman’s husband, blinds her, and yet we are still rooting for him and her to end up together at the end. It should have been an impossible feat for an actor to pull off. It’s a credit to both Sirk’s canny use of his muse, and Hudson’s warmth and earnestness as a performer, that the impossible doesn’t even feel effortful.

It’s no wonder that it was the performance that finally forced the world to pay attention. In his New York Times review, Howard Thompson said “the strapping, manly Mr Hudson gives a fine, direct account of himself, in the film’s only real surprise”. That directness as an actor made it easy to buy whatever he was selling, which in turn made him particularly valuable in a genre known for its often ridiculous narrative beats.

All That Heaven Allows (1955) sprung into being to capitalise on the popularity of Hudson and Jane Wyman’s pairing in Magnificent Obsession; their second time around, he’s a gardener, Ron, and she’s a rich society widow, Cary, drawn to him despite their age and class gap, and the derision of her friends and family.

Writer and director Mark Rappaport, whose cult essay film Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) centred on the gay subtext in Hudson’s classic movies, said All That Heaven Allows gave the actor little more to do than “keep his pompadour in place and wear a series of stunning lumberjack plaids”. While that’s a tad unfair – he does strong, nuanced work with just the intensity of his gaze – it was a less challenging turn than Magnificent Obsession.

Nevertheless, the way he is presented made it an archetypal role for Hudson. Again, his solidity offers a sturdy hub around which the movie’s more florid shows of emotion could pivot. “Ron’s security comes from inside himself, and nothing can ever take it away from him,” says one of his friends to Cary, which makes an appealing counter to the frivolous, vapid society that she was enmeshed in before she met him. Hudson hand-feeding a deer would become an iconic representation of how the actor’s combination of gentleness and masculinity made him such an irresistible romantic lead.

Sirk didn’t direct all of Hudson’s melodramas. In George Stevens’ epic Giant (1956), Hudson plays Bick Benedict, a tradition-loving Texan rancher who, following several dramatic decades and thanks to his progressive wife Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), learns how to become a better man.

Hudson received his sole Oscar nomination for his role as the Texan patriarch. Although co-stars Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean (who’d die during production) have the more colourful turns, Hudson’s Bick is the only one to undergo significant growth throughout the movie, his increasingly complicated family life beating his empty-headed prejudices into a more empathetic view of the world. Giant is as big and dramatic as its title would suggest, yet Hudson plays the changing nature of his character with surprising subtlety, his use of stillness particularly effective when acting opposite the twitchy, hyperkinetic Dean.

The typical Hudson melodrama character was a stoic, upstanding guy, but he could diverge. His social climber of One Desire (1955) is weak-willed and easily manipulated, only realising how poorly he’s treated the movie’s heroine when it’s almost too late. And in This Earth Is Mine! (1959), he’s the scion of a California winemaking dynasty, who – to their disdain – decides to combat losses from prohibition by collaborating with bootleggers. His John Rambeau is a brute, arrogant and sexually aggressive, and a world away from Hudson’s usual Sirkian persona. Though neither performance was among his best work, both twisted his robust charm and vigorous physicality in order to demonstrate an emotional range he was rarely given credit for.

Hudson’s chief melodrama era was centred in the mid-to-late 1950s. His last film of the decade was his first teaming with Doris Day in huge hit Pillow Talk (1959), and his 1960s would be dominated by similar light comedies. The 1970s were characterised by a move to TV, with his hit sitcom McMillan & Wife (1971 to 1977). Tragically, his 1980s were defined by the reveal of his AIDS diagnosis, from which he would die in 1985, aged 59.

While Hudson managed to fit several eras into his too-short screen career, it was the melodrama that best melded his Greek god physicality with his soulful acting skill, and melodrama that made him an enduring star.

Too Much: Melodrama on Film is a celebration of melodrama at BFI Southbank, in cinemas UK wide and on BFI Player from October to December.