Rock's Biography 2

Early career

Hudson made his debut with a small part in the 1948 Warner Bros.' Fighter Squadron. Hudson needed no less than 38 takes before successfully delivering his only line in the film.^[1]

He was further coached in acting, singing, dancing, fencing and horseback riding, and he began to feature in film magazines where he was promoted, possibly on the basis of his good looks. Success and recognition came in 1954 with Magnificent Obsession in which Hudson plays a bad boy who is redeemed opposite the popular star Jane Wyman. The film received rave reviews, with Modern Screen Magazine citing Hudson as the most popular actor of the year. Hudson's popularity soared in George Stevens's Giant, based on Edna Ferber's novel and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. As a result of their powerful performances, both Hudson and Dean were nominated for Oscars in the Best Actor category.

Following Richard Brooks's notable Something of Value (1957) and a moving performance in Charles Vidor's A Farewell to Arms, based on Ernest Hemingway's novel, Hudson sailed through the 1960s on a wave of romantic comedies. He portrayed humorous characters in Pillow Talk, the first of several profitable co-starring performances with Doris Day. This was followed by Come September, Send Me No Flowers, Man's Favorite Sport?, The Spiral Road (written by Jan de Hartog) and Strange Bedfellows. He worked outside his usual range on the science-fiction thriller Seconds (1966). The film flopped badly at the time but it later gained cult status, and his performance is often regarded as one of his best.^[2][3]

Later career

Hudson's popularity on the big screen diminished after the 1960s. He was quite successful on television starring in a number of made-for-TV movies. His most successful series was McMillan and Wife with Susan Saint James from 1971 to 1977. In this series, Hudson played police commissioner Stewart "Mac" McMillan with Saint James playing his wife Sally. Their on-screen chemistry helped make the show a success.

In the early 1980s, following years of heavy drinking and smoking, Hudson began having health problems. Emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery in November 1981 sidelined Hudson and his then-new TV show, The Devlin Connection for a year; the show suffered for the delay and was canceled not long after it returned to the air in December 1982. Hudson recovered from the surgery but continued to smoke. He was visibly ill filming The Ambassador in 1983 with Robert Mitchum - the two stars did not like each other, and Mitchum himself had a serious drinking problem.^[4]A couple of years later, Hudson's health had visibly deteriorated again, prompting different rumors.

From 1984 to 1985, Hudson landed a recurring role on the ABC prime time soap opera Dynasty as Daniel Reece, a love-interest for Krystle Carrington played by Linda Evans, and biological father of Sammy Jo Carrington played by Heather Locklear. While he had long been known to have difficulty memorizing lines, on Dynasty, Hudson's speech itself began to deteriorate.