Rochelle Hudson
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Rochelle Hudson
Biography
An ingenue of the 1930s, Rochelle Hudson insisted to interviewers that her career was due to a "friend of a friend of a friend" of her mother's, who happened to have connections with Fox film studios. Signed to a Fox contract in 1930, Hudson studied with the studio's voice coach, who farmed the girl out for singing work on radio and in cartoons; Hudson was briefly the voice of Honey in Warner Bros.' "Bosko" cartoons. Her first on-camera appearance, on loanout to RKO, was in Fanny Foley Herself. Though often stuck in girl-next-door parts, Hudson was also effectively cast as tomboys and slatterns. She appeared in several Will Rogers pictures, mainly because Rogers liked sharing the spotlight with actors from his home state of Oklahoma. Her career dwindling into "B"-picture leads at Columbia and PRC, Hudson left Hollywood in 1942, spending the war years working in Naval Intelligence with her first husband, reserve officer (and former Disney story editor) Hal Thompson. She returned to films in 1955 to play the mother of Natalie Wood in Rebel Without A Cause. Though her subsequent movie appearances were infrequent, she kept busy on television, co-starring on the 1954 sitcom That's My Boy and showing up on many an anthology series. Retiring from show business for good in 1967, Rochelle Hudson spent her last years as a successful real estate agent. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviFilmography:
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Rochelle Hudson
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Rochelle Hudson
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This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (May 2010) |
| Rochelle Hudson | |
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 Rochelle Hudson promoting Show Them No Mercy (1935) |
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| Born | March 6, 1916 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Died | January 17, 1972 (aged 55) Palm Desert, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouse | Robert L. Mindell (1963-1971) Dick Irving Hyland (1948-1950) Harold Thompson (1939-1947) Charles Brust (19??-19??) |
Rochelle Hudson (March 6, 1916 — January 17, 1972) was an American film actress from the 1930s through the 1960s. Hudson was a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1931.
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Contents
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Career
The Oklahoma City-born actress may be best remembered today for costarring in Wild Boys of the Road (1933), playing Cosette in Les Misérables (1935), playing Mary Blair, the older sister of Shirley Temple's character in Curly Top, and for playing Natalie Wood's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
During her peak years in the 1930s, notable roles for Hudson included: Richard Cromwell's love interest in the Will Rogers showcase Life Begins at Forty (1935), the daughter of carnival barker W.C. Fields in Poppy (1936), Claudette Colbert's adult daughter in Imitation of Life (1934).
She also played Sally Glynn, the fallen ingenue to whom Mae West imparts the immortal wisdom, "When a girl goes wrong, men go right after her!" in the 1933 Paramount film, She Done Him Wrong.
In the 1954-1955 television season, Hudson co-starred with Gil Stratton and Eddie Mayehoff in the CBS situation comedy That's My Boy, based on a 1951 Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin film of the same name.[1]
Personal life
Hudson was married four times. Her first husband was Charles Brust. Little is known of the marriage other than it ended in divorce. She remarried in 1939 to Harold Thompson, who was the head of the Storyline Department at Disney Studios. She assisted Thompson, who was doing espionage work in Mexico as a civilian during World War II. They posed as a vacationing couple to various parts of Mexico, to detect if there was any German activity in these areas. One of their more successful vacations uncovered a supply of high test aviation gas hidden by German agents in Baja California.[2]
After their divorce in 1947, she married a third time the following year to Los Angeles Times sportswriter, Dick Irving Hyland. The marriage lasted two years before the couple divorced. Her final marriage was to Robert Mindell, a hotel executive. The two remained together for eight years before they divorced in 1971.
She was actually born in 1916, but the studio reportedly made her two years older for her to play a wider variety of roles, including romantic roles.[citation needed] In That's My Boy, she was cast as the mother of Gil Stratton, who was only six years her junior.
On January 17, 1972, Hudson was found dead in her home at the Palm Desert Country Club. A business associate with whom she had been working in real estate discovered her body sprawled on the bathroom floor. Hudson died of pneumonia brought on by a liver ailment. Her only close survivor was her mother.[3]
Partial filmography
- Fanny Foley Herself (1931)
- The Savage Girl (1932)
- Penguin Pool Murder (1932)
- Hell's Highway (1932)
- Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
- She Done Him Wrong (1933)
- Doctor Bull (1933)
- The Mighty Barnum (1934)
- Imitation of Life (1934)
- Judge Priest (1934)
- Harold Teen (1934)
- Life Begins at Forty (1935)
- Les Misérables (1935)
- Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938)
- Babies for Sale (1940)
- Convicted Woman (1940)
- Men Without Souls (1940)
- Island of Doomed Men (1940)
- Meet Boston Blackie (1941)
- Rubber Racketeers (1942)
- Bush Pilot (1947)
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
- Strait-Jacket (1964)
- Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors (1967)
References
- ^ "That's My Boy". Internet Movie Data Base. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046651/. Retrieved March 12, 2011.
- ^ IMDb profile
- ^ Beaver County times:"Death is investigated" Jan.19 1972
Sources
- Forty Years of Screen Credits, 1929-1969. Two volumes. Compiled by John T. Weaver. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1970. Entries begin on page 57.
- Biography and Genealogy Master Index. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, Cengage Learning. 1980- 2009.
- Beaver County times:"Death is investigated" Jan.19 1972.
External links
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Mentioned in
Fanny Foley Herself
(1931 Comedy Film)
Robert Kent
(Actor, Crime/Drama)
Sky Liner
(1949 Spy Film)
The Country Beyond
(1936 Western Film)
Life Begins at 40
(1935 Comedy Drama Film)
» More