View source for Rock Hudson
From RoyalWeb
Jump to:
navigation
,
search
==Biography== ===Childhood=== Rock Hudson was an American actor, born as Roy Harold Scherer, Jr on 17 Nov 1925 in Winnetka, Cook County, [[Illinois]], the son of [[Ancestry of Rock Hudson|Roy Harold Scherer, Sr]] an auto mechanic, and his wife [[Ancestry of Rock Hudson|Katherine "Kay" Wood]] (d. 1977), who had just married the year before. Kay was the daughter of James Wood and Mary Ellen unknown. Roy Sr left the family in 1932 and went to California. Rock's obit in the NYT states that Roy had lost his job during the Depression. After Roy left, Kay started dating Wallace "Wally" FitzGerald who worked shoveling coal at the Winnetka Water Works. Kay and Wally married when Rock was eight, and Wally adopted Roy who became Roy FitzGerald. Roy FitzGerald went to New Trier High School. Wally and Kay fought and he would beat her and Roy. They divorced, Kay married him a second time, and they divorced again when Roy was fifteen. Kay became a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family. For several years they lived above Walgreen's Drug Store. ===To California=== <table><tr><td>http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/lg/2/2/Celebrity-Image-Rock-Hudson--small-Size--223228.jpg</td><td> "Roy Fitzgerald enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1943 and was shipped on the S.S. Lew Wallace, a Kaiser Liberty ship, to Samar, a sandy island in the Philippines." (''Rock Hudson: His Story'', p42) (His obit in the NYT says he enlisted in 1944.) He was shipped home in 1946 and decided to go to California because his father, was living in Long Beach, with a new wife and a daughter. He lived with his father for a short time, but it didn't work out well. He found a job driving for Budget Pack. In Long Beach, for the first time, he met men who were open about being gay. One of these was [[Kenneth G Hodge]]. "...Ken Hodge had worked in radio for many years, producing [[Lux Radio Theatre]]. Ken was thirty-six and Roy was twenty-one...he lived in a penthouse...in the [[Chateau Marmont]], a building owned by his Aunt Bernadette." (''His Story'', p 43)</td></tr></table> Roy and Kenneth met in the Summer of 1947. Davison relates a story told her by [[Herbert Millspaugh]], claiming to describe how the name "Rock Hudson" came about.<blockquote>"I received a letter from Herbert Millspaugh, a retired clerk in San Francisco, who said he had been present the day Roy Fitzgerald was named Rock Hudson. He included names, dates and supporting photographs</blockquote><blockquote>In the summer of 1947, Millspaugh said, he was living in Long Beach, working for the Texas Oil Company, hanging out by the Villa Riviera and going to parties at the penthouse of Ken Hodge. Ken introduced him to an extremely handsome young man he'd just met, Roy Fitzgerald, who wanted to be an actor. One sunday, a group of Ken's friends walked back from the beach to Ken's apartment, fixed gin and tonics and started trying to think up a name for the actor.</blockquote><blockquote>"Ken wanted a name that suggested strength," Millspaugh said. "Someone came up with Rock. Then we looked through the Long Beach phone book to find a second name that sounded right. We came up with Hudson. Everything you've read in the press duing the last forty years about the origin of the name is malarkey." (''His Story'', p 44)</blockquote> Millspaugh also told this story on [http://www.tv.com/e!-true-hollywood-story/rock-hudson/episode/191177/summary.html The E! True Hollywood Story:Rock Hudson]. Robert Hefler claims that this Herbert died in 1999, however that Herbert A Millspaugh who died in Florida was born in 1917 in Indiana and more damning, his SSN was issued from Indiana. The chance that he moved from Indiana to California by 1947 is diminished. Checking the U.S. Public Records Index, I find a Herbert E Millspaugh, age 82, listed in San Francisco. And I find him in the 1970 San Francisco Telephone directory at the same address. It's interesting that it's implied that they lived in the Chateau Marmont in one place, but in the Villa Riviera in another. The Villa Riviera is at 800 East Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach (see [http://www.villariviera.net/component/option,com_magazine/func,show_edition/id,2/Itemid,44/ here]). ===To Hollywood=== <table><tr><td>http://www.nndb.com/people/655/000026577/rock1.jpg</td><td>Together, Roy and Ken left Long Beach and moved to Hollywood where they shared a bungalow in the hills. Kenneth worked his contacts and threw parties to introduce his protege. At one of these, Roy met [[Henry Willson]]. Without Ken's knowledge, Roy contacted Willson, they signed a contract and Willson became his agent. A short time later, Kenneth moved back to Long Beach, alone. Davidson reports that "..Roy's first check, made out to "Roy FitzGerald" from Vanguard Films of Culver City is endorsed on the back "Roy FitzGerald, Pay to the Order of Rock Hudson, Kenneth G Hodge" Hudson's first named role, according to his Wikipedia article was in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Squadron ''Fighter Squadron''] in 1948. </td></tr></table> ===Early Career=== Rock appeared in the film ''[[Giant]]'' starring opposite [[Elizabeth Taylor]] and [[James Dean]]. It was Dean's last picture, he died in a car accident. Phyllis Gates' in her autobiography relates that when Rock heard the news he start sobbing because he had wished Dean dead and now he was dead.
Return to
Rock Hudson
.
Views
Page
Discussion
View source
History
Personal tools
Log in
Navigation
Main page
Community portal
Current events
Recent changes
Random page
Help
Search
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Special pages
MOOCOW
Google AdSense