Rock Hudson

Darling Lili is a 1970 American musical film.

Set during World War I, it centers on Lili Smith, a popular British music hall performer who is regarded as a femme fatale. She’s actually a German spy, and the uncle she dotes upon is really Col. Kurt Von Ruger, a fellow espionage agent and her contact for the Huns. In hopes of gaining valuable information, Lili begins using her feminine wiles on Maj. William Larrabee, a top American pilot. However, Lili soon discovers that she’s falling in love with Larrabee and can’t find the courage to betray him, and when Larrabee discovers Lili’s secret, he refuses to turn her in.Read More »

Plot Synopsis
from allmovie
The popular radio detective series The Fat Man was brought to the screen in 1951, with the series’ original star J. Scott Smart retained in the title role. Smart plays porcine sleuth Brad Runyon, who tackles the mystery surrounding the murder of a Los Angeles dentist. With the assistance of general factotum Bill Norton (Clinton Sundberg), Runyon follows the trail of clues all the way to a three-ring circus. Famed Barnum & Bailey clown Emmett Kelly makes his screen debut as one of the suspects; others essential to the action are such up-and-comers as Rock Hudson, Julie London and Jayne Meadows. The film’s flashback-within-flashback structure helps to enliven its more verbose passages. For the most part, The Fat Man plays more like a radio show than a movie–at least until the exciting climax, inventively staged by director William Castle.Read More »

Wealthy industrialist Robert Talbot arrives early for his annual vacation at his luxurious Italian villa to find three problems lying in wait for him. Firstly, his long-time girlfriend Lisa Fellini has given up waiting for him to pop the question and has decided to marry another man. Secondly, the major domo of his villa, Maurice Clavell, has turned the estate into a posh hotel to make some easy money while the boss isn’t around. And, finally, the current guests of the “hotel” are a group of young American girls trying to fend off a gang of oversexed boys, led by Tony, who are ‘laying siege’ at the outer walls of the villa. Talbot, to his own surprise, finds himself becoming an overprotective chaperone. —Alfred Jingle, imdbRead More »

Twenty five years after the death of Rock Hudson, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, biographers and movie historians discuss his career, his personal life and his death, all especially in relation to his closeted homosexuality. Born Roy Fitzgerald, Hudson treated who was known as “Rock Hudson” as being a studio creation that was somewhat outside himself. However, he sometimes was still “Rock Hudson: movie star” to those who knew him. Publicly, he had to maintain the façade of that creation, the public who saw in him a handsome, rugged, masculine yet likable and safe leading man and movie star. That façade included a short two-year marriage of convenience to Phyllis Gates. His movie career on the most part also supported that façade, especially when there was a foil of a more effeminate or nebbish male character playing against him. Read More »

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Three years after the end of the Apache wars, peacemaking chief Cochise dies. His elder son Taza shares his ideas, but brother Naiche yearns for war…and for Taza’s betrothed, Oona. Naiche loses no time in starting trouble which, thanks to a bigoted cavalry officer, ends with the proud Chiricahua Apaches on a reservation, where they are soon joined by the captured renegade Geronimo, who is all it takes to light the firecracker’s fuse…Read More »

American Cinematheque wrties:
James Stewart stars as a former border raider who narrowly escapes the hangman’s noose (he still smarts from the rope) and is trying to start over again in the wide-open Oregon country. Instead, he winds up involved with the wily and charming Arthur Kennedy in a wagon train that includes the eligible Laurie Baile (Julie Adams) and a load of supplies worth their weight in gold. One of director Anthony Mann’s finest films, combining action, character and landscape in a seamless and wildly satisfying package.Read More »

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Brendan O’Malley arrives at the Mexican home of old flame Belle Breckenridge to find her married to a drunkard getting ready for a cattle drive to Texas. Hot on O’Malley’s heels is lawman Dana Stribling who has a personal reason for getting him back into his jurisdiction. Both men join Breckenridge and his wife on the drive. As they near Texas tensions mount, not least because Stribling is starting to court Belle and O’Malley is increasingly drawn by her daughter Missy.Read More »

Battle Hymn was inspired by the true story of American minister Dean Hess, played here with rare sensitivity by Rock Hudson. A bomber pilot during World War II, Hess inadvertently releases a bomb which destroys a German orphanage. Tortured by guilt, Hess relocates in Korea after the war to offer his services as a missionary. Combining the best elements of Christianity and Eastern spiritualism, Hess establishes a large home for orphans. The preacher’s efforts are threatened when the Korean “police action” breaks out in 1950. Battle Hymn was one of several collaborations between Rock Hudson and director Douglas Sirk–though Sirk felt that Robert Stack would have been better suited to the role of Rev. Hess.Read More »

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A wealthy young wastrel, Bob Merrick, cracks up his speedboat and almost dies, to be saved at the last minute by a resuscitator borrowed from the home of a famous surgeon who lives nearby. In the meantime the surgeon himself has suffered an attack, and, with his equipment out on loan, dies before he can be revived. The guilt-ridden Bob clumsily tries to make amends by romancing the surgeon’s young widow, Helen, but only causes further tragedy…Read More »