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, All Movie Guide
- Also Credited As:
Rochelle Elizabeth Hudson
- Born:
March 6, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
- Died:
January 17, 1972.
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Job Titles:
Actor, Real estate broker
Family
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Father: Ollie Lee Hudson. descendant of British explorer Henry Hudson; suffered emotional breakdown in 1927; family moved to California; divorced from Hudson s mother c. 1928; moved to Kansas
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Mother: Mae Goddard. divorced from Hudson s father c. 1928; survived her
Education
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Ernest Belcher Academy, Hollywood, California, singing and dancing
Milestones
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1927 Moved with family to California after father s nervous breakdown
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1928 Made screen test at Fox; signed to six-month contract, although she never made a film
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1931 Film debut in Laugh and Get Rich
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1931 Named a Wampas Baby Star
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1933 Cast in She Done Him Wrong , starring Mae West and Cary Grant
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1933 Resigned with Fox
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1935 Played Shirley Temple s older sister in Curly Top
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1935 Retained by Darryl Zanuck when Twentieth Century-Fox was formed
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1940 Toured in vaudeville
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1945 Moved to Canada with Thompson
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1947 Returned to the USA
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1951 TV debut in episode of Racket Squad
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1954 Was series regular on That s My Boy
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1955 Cast as Natalie Wood s mother in Rebel Without a Cause
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1963 Resumed her career in Straight Jacket and in TV guest appearances
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1967 Became partner with her mother in real estate ventures
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1967 Final film Dr. Terror s Gallery of Horrors
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Born in Oklahoma
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By age six was performing in local church pageants
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During WWII, worked for US Naval Intelligence with then-husband Harold Thompson
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Offered two-year contract with RKO
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Remained in California after parents divorce
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Retired from acting and moved to a ranch in Arizona