026 - Rock Hudson (Part I: The Sirk Years)

We're trying something new on Cinema Very Gay and taking a career retrospective for the next few weeks on Rock Hudson! He is known perhaps best for being a hunky, mildly-talented, openly-closeted movie star of the 50s and 60s, and for his high profile death due to complications from AIDS in 1985, but there really was much more to Hudson and his famed career than many first assume. Over the next four episodes, join Jake and Kevin as we look back on four key periods in Hudson's film career and talk about how the façade of Hudson's on-screen presence was in contrast to his real-life dalliances.  To begin, we start with the phase of Hudson's career that flung him into stardom and made him a household name, his collaborations with director Douglas Sirk. Sirk today is synonymous with 50s melodrama, those saccharine, romantic "women's pictures" that we know and love today. Though not as critically-acclaimed in his time as he is today, Sirk's films still were hits at the box office, and his decision to bring Hudson out of the background and into his turn as a leading man. Thanks to Sirk, every man wanted to be Rock Hudson, and every woman wanted to be with him...and as it turns out, lots of men did too! Join Jake and Kevin this week as we take a look back at the 8 films of the Sirk-Hudson collaboration: Has Anyone Seen My Gal? (1952); Taza, Son of Cochise (1954); Magnificent Obsession (1954); Captain Lightfoot (1955); All That Heaven Allows (1955); Written on the Wind (1956); Battle Hymn (1957); and Tarnished Angels (1957). They might not all be hits, but we're pretty obsessed with a few of them, and hope you find some new favorites in this first part of the series!