17 November: Rock Hudson

Actor Rock Hudson was born on this date in 1925. 10 things you might not know about Rock Hudson.

1. His real name was Roy Harold Scherer Jr. Later, when his father left and his mother remarried, he was adopted by his step-father and became Roy Fitzgerald. The name Rock Hudson was coined for him by his agent from the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River. Hudson actually hated the name.
2. His interest in acting was sparked by working as an usher in a cinema as a teenager.
3. When he left school, he joined the US Navy and served in the second world war as an aircraft mechanic in the Philippines. He was discharged in 1946.
4. He applied to drama school in California but was rejected. Talent scout Henry Willson took him on when Hudson sent him a photograph of himself.
5. His film debut was in a 1948 film called Fighter Squadron. Hudson had just one line in the film. It took him 38 takes to get it right. After that, he was coached in acting and other disciplines which might come in handy for a leading man - singing, dancing, horseback riding and fencing. He was good looking and photogenic, which probably helped a lot.
6. He starred in a number of B movies before his breakout film in 1954, Magnificent Obsession, with Jane Wyman.
7. Rumours abounded that Hudson was gay, not something that would help an actor's career in the 1950s. His agent did all he could to keep Hudson's personal life out of the spotlight. In 1955 Husdon married his agent's secretary, Phyllis Gates. She insisted it was a love match, not a way to cover up Hudson's homosexuality. She filed for divorce after three years citing mental cruelty. Neither married again, unless you believe the urban myth spread in the 1970s saying that Hudson had secretly married Jim Nabors. Same sex marriage wasn't legal then, and the two always appeared to be no more than friends in public.
8. His last film was a made for television movie called The Vegas Strip War in 1984. His final acting role was on the TV series Dynasty.
9. His life has been the subject of three plays and a 1990 TV film. There was also a parody of him in an episode of the Flintstones, an actor called Rock Quarry.
10. He died of AIDS at the age of 59, one of the first celebrities to be diagnosed with the disease.

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Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

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