Universal, having just merged with International Pictures, was on an improvement kick. The studio's new head, William Goetz, formerly chief of International, and son-in-law of the powerful Louis B. Mayer, had announced they were going to stop cranking out B-pictures and make a play for the more sophisticated palate. To that end, they had set up a rigourous actor's training program, and were hiring a number of young new players they hoped would turn into stars of tomorrow. A number of them actually did. Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Jeff Chandler, Piper Laurie, Mamie Van Doren, Hugh O'Brian, Barbara Rush.

Piper Laurie, then only seventeen, was signed at Universal at almost the exact time Rock was, and the two made a screen test together. Each of the new players made a series of tests with various people so the studio could evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. The test with Rock and Piper came from a screenplay called Thunder on the Hill and was so memorable only because of one line Laurie had to say, "It was so hilarious I've never gotten it out of my head. Whenever we would meet we'd quote that stupid line. Even today it makes me giggle." What the diminutive redheaded Laurie had to do was stare up at Rock with quiet intensity and say, "I love you like this, all stirred up with fire in your eyes." It was too much for them. They could barely get through the scene without cracking up.

Despite this, Piper Laurie's memories of life under contract to the studios focus on the dark side of the system. "In those days Metro and Fox had more interesting projects, more interesting people. I don't know why we were there," Despite Goetz's announcement that Universal was getting out out of the B-picture, the studio continued to crank them out. What the young Laurie objected to was not the professional training but the rest of the demands made on the players. "They were manufacturing these young movie stars. When we weren't making movies, we were in school or on the road promoting the movies. We were told before going on these trips or being interviewed that we had to act a certain way, dress a certain way, say certain things, and not say certain things. No cigarettes or drings were shown in photographs. You could not discuss politics. It was all very prudish and reactionary. We couldn't be ourselves. That was one of Rocks's problems all his life. He was manufactured from the day he gout out there and he was under that pressure his entire life." "I Was told what to do for twenty-five years," he was to say many years later, "And I've had it." Laurie feels she was one of the lucky ones. "I got fed up with it and left. Rock was unlucky in that he stayed long enough to get the big break and he was under their infuluence for such a long time. I'm sure Rock felt he would have been betraying all those people who had be responsible for his success." Rock's sense of loyalty was one of the strongest traits of his nature - even when that loyalty was not in his own best interest. There was no doubt he felt loyalty to Universal. Throughout his life, he would speak of his obligations to them. It was many years before Rock would feel he had the right to turn down a picture; in fact, not until the Pillow Talk era of his careeer.

The studios were always looking for gimmicks to promote their performeres, Piper Laurie, despite her years as a respected actress, is still remembered by industry old-timers as the girl who ate flowers. Universal, straining for novelty, had set up several photo sessions in which Laurie was forced to work her way through a plateful of roses. "It was awful," said the actress flatly, undoubtedly remembering some of her less than satisfying lunches at Universal. "It was very unhealthy, especially when it happened to young people who didn't know what the hell was happening to them."

Pinup pictures too were the order of the day - for both male and female playeres. So many male actors were forced to pose in bathing suits that columnist Sidney Skolsky coined a term for them: the "beefcake brigade." Rock appeared so many times in so many poses, he eventually earned a special accolade; he was called the "Beefcake Baron." It was a tag that neither the critic nor the public would ever let him forget. In many ways, it was unhealthy, as Laurie said, and perhaps danagerous. Some, of course, managed to emerge intact from the system - Laurie herself lived at home and had a strong, stable family that approved her ultimate decision to quit the studio. She later emerged as an actress, not a rose chomper.

As two new kids on the block, he and Laurie struck up an instant friendship. "He was just a warm, overgrown kid who loved to eat and laugh," she remembered. "He'd come to my parents house, and the first thing my mother would do was put food on the table and he'd gobble it up." The relationship was strictly of the big brother-kid sister variety, though looking back, Laurie thinks she might have felt a stray yearning occasionally. At twenty-four, Rock was startlingly handsome. "I didn't have romantic feelings, but that doesn't mean I couldn't have," she said, a bit wistfully. "I grew up not having brothers, so it was so wonderful having a relaxed, open relationship with somebody who was beautiful and who loved to laugh so much."

To Laurie, a Los Angeles girl, Rock could seem at times "somewhat naive, small-townish." His mother, Kay, whom Rock had brought to the studio, struck her the same way. "She was a very large, rather plump, tall woman - extremely shy but warm and sweet. She seemed to me like the perfect fairy-tale mother, a good cook and homemaker," she said. Rock's manner with her was "respectful and friendly. It seemed a nice relationship- on the surface anyway. One never knows." There were nice parts about the early days at the studio that Piper Laurie remembers with affection, and most of them revolved around the woman who was the chief acting coach at Universal: Sophie Rosenstein. "She was wonderful, and close to all of us," said Laurie. Rosenstein and all the other acting coaches "were all sort of paternal and maternal. They made us feel safe and taken care of." "Warm and magnificant," were Rock's words for Rosenstein. "I owe her a lot more than I can say." Rosenstein was in her forties, a petite brunette married to actor Gig Young. Through her acting class, she was the one mainly responsible for whipping the new Universal players into shape. A warm, caring woman, Rosenstein soon became surrogate mother to her brood, who treated her as a confidante. Though Rock had barely scraped through New Trier High School, her now found himself working harder at the various Universal courses - particularly Rosenstein's - than he had ever worked in his life. "You really had to be on your toes," said Mamie Van Doren, a young player who was eventually hawked as Universa;'s answer to Marilyn Monroe. "The people who surived were the ones who really worked at it. I was a worker and Rock was too."
The directors and producers at Universal were in no hurry to put the new stable of players to work in pictures, preferring to trust more seasoned performers. Rosenstein tried to remedy the situation. She produced showcases featuring her brood, to give them a chance to show the studio what they could do. One of the skits was "Pals?", a musical western written by Dick Morris.
Rock auditioned eagerly for "Pals" but lost out to Tony Curtis. Morris was convinced Rock was incapable of carrying a tune. The rebuff rankled for years. In 1965 Hudson inscribed a picture to Morris with the words "So you thought I couldn't do 'Pals?' When Morris heard Rock had collapsed in the Ritz in Paris, in July, 1985, he sent off a cable: GET OUT OF BED AND COME HOME AND LET"S DO "PALS." "Pals" did turn out to be a lucky skit for the players who starred in it, Curtis and Laurie. As a result, both were cast in their first leading roles in a movie called The Prince Who Was a Thief. Rock had to wait a bit longer for his chance.
It was obvious to everyone at Universal that Rock's career was not taking off in the way Tony Curtis's was. In fact, Piper Laurie claims that at one pont during those early years rock came perilously close to being dropped by the studion. "All he was doing was playing these little bit parts, really stupid things. I guess they thought he didn't really have it. They had a lot of other men then like Jeff Chandler and Tony Curtis." Rock, she said, was aware of the possibility that Universal might drop his option, and was very upset about it. "He was very unhappy, really very depressed. He expressed it to me. It was real depression, real anxiety. More than anxiety." Laurie couldn't stand to see her good friend so miserable. Unknown to Rock, she decided to see what she could do to help. "I was luckier earlier on than him, because they worked me a lot in so-called starring roles, even though they wre really stupid. So I had the ear of an important producer there." Without letting anybody know what she was up to, Laurie made an appointment with the producer (whom she refused to name) - and proceeded to plead for her friend at length. Finally, impressed by the little redhead's tenacity and loyalty, the producer agreed to give Rock a decent part in an upcoming movie. Laurie never told Rock about her intervention. "It would seem as self-serving," she said. In fact, her determination may have saved Rock's neck at Univesal. The producer knew the actress was speaking as a friend and colleague, but he knew something else as well. Piper Laurie was also an American teen-ager. An it was the response of American teen-age girls that would ultimately make Rock Hudson a star.

Perhaps Piper Laurie's stand had something to do with it, perhaps not, but it was around this time that things began to pick up a bit for Rock. The Iron Mank in 1951, starring contract player Jeff Chandler, was one of the first movies in which Rock played an actual secondary lead, as a prizefighter. Joseph Pevney directed. When Universal producer Aaron Rosenberg first suggested Rock for the part, Pevney, the memory of Rock as a doorman still sharp in his mind, was first dismissive, then horrified. "You can't do that to me," Pevney pleaded when Rosenberg's suggestion began to look more like an order. "He's a southpaw! Jesus, give me an actor, for crying out loud." "Joe, said Rosenberg patiently, "he's going to be a star someday." "Aaron," said Pevney, "I'll wait." Rock did get the part, and even Pevney was impressed with his dedication.
Piper Laurie painted a disturbing picture of one of Rock's bouts with stage fright, which actually seemed serious enough to qualify as outright phobia. She witnessed it at one of the showcase productions. Wandering backstage, waiting to go on, she saw her friend - tall, handsome Rock- literlly sobbing with fear. "I thought he was not going to make it. It was the most pathetic case of stage fright I've ever seen in my life. Now, I was seated - but this was pathetic. Here was this huge man, crying. I tried to be as comforting and supportive as I could, and he made it... but I was really struck by this great vulnerability in such a big man. I never experienced anything like that." "Fright is one of the worst things in the world," Rock would say years later. "A terrible feeling, like a disease you can't control."

Despite the excitement of being with a major motion-picture studio, Rock's early years at Universal were lonely in many ways. He was, as Piper Laurie said, small-townish- used to the easy friendliness of a Midwest community. Even in the fifties, Hollywood was far from being a small town. There were a few pals - like Piper Laurie, Dick Morris, singer-dancer Carleton Carpenter - but for the most part, his social like, such as it was, was engineered by Henry Willson.

Rock worked with Douglas Kirk, a respected Danish-born director, in Has Anybody Seen My Gal? with Rock playing the secondary role as Piper Laurie's soda-jerk boyfriend. But this would be different. This time he would be the star (Magnificent Obsession).

Early in Rock's career the fan magazines ran themselves ragged reporting his various dates and supposed relationships with women. He was dating, he was folling for, he was madly in love - at various times - with Piper Laurie, Vera-Ellen, Debbie Power, Betty Abbott (Bud's niece), Marilyn Maxwell, and, of course, the woman he married, Phyllis Gates. Was any of it true? Possible. Jimmy Dobson is positive Rock had affairs with a number of women over the years, including several actresses. Evern Marc Christian, one of Rock's last lovers, believes Rock had a real relationship, sexual and emotional, with Phyllis Gates - before they were married. Christian claims that Rock told him it had fallen apart with marriage. Piper Laurie, Elaine Stritch, Debbie Power - all of whom were reported to be romantically involved with Rock at one time or another - today admit cheerfully the relationship was one of friendship only. Phyllis Gates is not talking.