{"id":60,"date":"2012-10-27T10:56:40","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T10:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/?p=60"},"modified":"2012-12-13T10:10:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T10:10:27","slug":"30th-october-2012-glt2-5-30pm-acting-and-behaving-like-a-man-rock-hudsons-performance-style-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/2012\/10\/27\/30th-october-2012-glt2-5-30pm-acting-and-behaving-like-a-man-rock-hudsons-performance-style-2\/","title":{"rendered":"30th October 2012, GLT2, 5.30pm: Acting and Behaving Like a Man: Rock Hudson\u2019s Performance Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood film Magnificent Obsession (1954)<\/em><\/p>\n

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A poster advertising Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955)<\/em><\/p>\n

30th October 2012, GLT2, 5.30 pm<\/strong>
\nDr John Mercer, Birmingham School of Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Acting and Behaving Like a Man: Rock Hudson\u2019s Performance Style<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rock Hudson is rarely considered to be one of the great film actors. Indeed it has become a popular legend that it took 38 takes for the young actor to deliver his only line in his 1948 debut\u00a0Fighter<\/em>Squadron<\/em>. At the height of his fame in the 1950s he was most often praised for his stoicism and persistence, consistently described, using a back-handed compliment, as the \u2018hardest working actor in Hollywood.\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1946 the actor and writer Alexander Knox wrote an essay called \u2018Acting and Behaving\u2019 published in\u00a0Hollywood Quarterly<\/em>\u00a0that discussed both stage and screen acting making a distinction between acting (the actor\u2019s craft) and behaving (the performance offered by most film stars and for Knox at least an inferior activity.) In this paper I am using this broadly contemporaneous distinction to try and understand Hudson\u2019s performances. My intention is in part at least an attempt to recuperate Rock Hudson as an actor and to make a case for the study of the type of performance style that he is associated with.<\/p>\n

As a successful Hollywood star Hudson was to perform in roles that defined the ideals of mid 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century American masculinity in effect he was the epitome of heteronormativity. Working with a variety of directors and across a diverse range of genres from westerns to war film, melodrama to romantic comedy Hudson illustrated what it meant to be a man.<\/p>\n

Initially self-taught, Rock Hudson learnt his craft \u2018on the job\u2019 aiming for a naturalistic style. He took to heart Raoul Walsh\u2019s early advice; \u201cDon\u2019t try to act\u2026Remember up on that screen you\u2019re magnified forty times. Be natural, underplay and it will look great.\u201d The performance style that Hudson was to become associated with allows for an especially limited and circumscribed expressive range for a male actor and consequently the need for nuance is paramount. Hudson\u2019s performances then can be understood as a form of \u2018behaving\u2019. My argument in this paper is that the \u2018behaving\u2019 that Hudson demonstrates in his films is a very refined form of performance doubly complicated by the details of his personal life.<\/p>\n

In this paper I will explore Hudson\u2019s \u2018behaving\u2019 in\u00a0Written on the Wind<\/em>\u00a0(1956) and other films by Douglas Sirk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood film Magnificent Obsession (1954) A poster advertising Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) 30th October 2012, GLT2, 5.30 pm Dr John Mercer, Birmingham School … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/melodramaresearchgroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}