When Hudson and Dean worked together in 1955, they brought different approaches to acting, fame and being queer in Hollywood.
** FILE ** In this 1956 file photo originally released by Warner Bros., actor James Dean is seen in a scene from “Giant.” Posthumous Oscar contenders include James Dean, who was nominated for best actor twice after his death, with 1955’s “East of Eden” and 1956’s “Giant.” ** NO SALES **The characters that Rock Hudson and James Dean play in the acclaimed 1956 film, “Giant,” don’t like each other very much.
The documentary charts Hudson’s journey, as he arrived in Hollywood in the late 1940s, quickly rose to stardom in the early 1950s and became one of the film word’s biggest stars. It also shows that Hudson was unambiguous about being gay in his private life. But he and his managers were committed to maintaining the idea that he was the model of midcentury heterosexual manhood.
Griffin suggested that there were a number of reasons there was no love lost between the two stars. “Giant,” a generation-spanning epic about a Texas ranch family and the rise of the oil industry, was filmed in the spring and summer of 1955,One can assume that the actors also didn’t get along because they came from two different acting traditions and probably had different approaches to their craft and to being movie stars.
“James Dean was kept by a gay radio executive who was indeed friends with Rock’s agent Henry Willson,” Griffin said. He’s referring to Henry Wilson, the Hollywood insider who liked to find handsome former sailors and soldiers like Hudson and transform them into macho matinee idols. “If you’re talking about shrouded sexuality, they weren’t all that different,” Griffin said.
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