Rock Hudson and Raoul Walsh – A Double Bill: Sea Devils (1953)/The Lawless Breed (1953)

Was Rock Hudson (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr.) given the most American of names for a Hollywood star? Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach) is a contender and John Wayne (born Marion Robert Morrison) and even stronger and more direct. Roy Harold’s new name was a mixture of the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River, evoking a path that crosses several U.S. states and a strong and unyielding bulwark in the midst of it.

Did Hudson have the kind of acting chops that lived up to his name? Compared to John Wayne and (especially) Cary Grant, the answer’s no. His advantages were a strapping tall frame and easygoing charm. He was not often given the kind of quality screenplays to make demands on his acting — though, in films by John Frankenheimer (Seconds) and Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession) he could well acquit himself.

I consider Hudson to be a “meat and potatoes” sort of movie star, an average actor breezing through a lot of average Hollywood movies. No two better examples could be discussed than these two back-to-back films Hudson made with the similarly practical director Raoul Walsh, a filmmaker who hadn’t much of a recognizable style and who, like Hudson, was usually only as good as the screenplay. Both Sea Devils and The Lawless Breed were made in 1953, both in color.

Made for the British Coronado Productions owned by producer David Rose (and distributed by RKO), Sea Devils was loosely adapted by Borden Chase from Victor Hugo’s novel The Toilers of the Sea (so loosely that Victor Hugo’s name was left off the credits). Sea Devils takes place in 1800, when Britain and France were fighting the War of the Second Coalition; European monarchies were hoping to thwart Napoleon’s expansion of the French Republic. Hudson plays a fisherman named Gilliat who, along with his comrade Willie (Bryan Forbes, King Rat, 1965), has had to turn to smuggling to survive during the war. One person he smuggles, a beautiful woman named Drouchette (Yvonne De Carlo, The Munsters), is taken from the Channel Islands to the coast of France. She first feeds him a sob story about her plans to rescue her brother from a French prison. Gil then inadvertently discovers she’s a Countess helping feed information to Napoleon (Gérard Oury, The Heart of the Matter, 1953). What the viewer knows that Gil doesn’t is that Drouchette is actually a counterspy, a British agent determined to undermine Napoleon’s battle plans.

The entire story, leaping back and forth from the Channel Islands to France, is built on this misunderstanding. Gil loves this mysterious woman, then hates her, then loves her again. There is, unfortunately, no romantic spark between Hudson and De Carlo on film. While not unpleasant by any means, Sea Devils could have used more sparks in general. Its formal-sounding dialogue has some slight humor but could have used more. It has action but would have benefitted from swashbuckling swordplay.

More interesting than any forced romance between Hudson and De Carlo is the surrealist artist Jacques (L’Age d’Or, 1930) Brunius’ turn as Fouche, a French government operative determined to flush out any spying undertaken to undermine Napoleon’s plans. Suspecting Drouchette isn’t who she presents herself to be, he goes about entrapping her while Napoleon himself is arriving at the Countess’ chateau. Although a villain, his determination is the strongest thing the film has going for it.

Hudson and Walsh fare somewhat better in The Lawless Breed, a farcically romanticized version of the life of serial manslaughterer John Wesley Hardin. The film begins with Hardin (Hudson) being released from a Texas prison in 1896, whereupon he drops a manuscript of his life story at the office of a local publisher; the movie’s a flashback. Hudson isn’t convincing playing the teenage Hardin (he was 28 at the time), whose fire-and-brimstone father tries to physically beat religion into him. Hardin drinks and gambles as a sort of rebellion, but shoots and kills a man in self-defense, thus setting both the law and the victim’s brothers (including Lee Van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More, 1965) on his trail.

Thus is set in motion a repetition of events in which Hardin has to kill in self-defense, getting himself deeper into trouble. The plans to marry his childhood sweetheart, Jane (Mary Castle, Gunsmoke, 1953) are ruined and he eventually shacks up with saloon hall worker Rosie (Julie Adams, who you may most remember as a regular cast member of Murder She Wrote). The law, though, and those brothers are always two steps behind …

The Lawless Breed has brighter, sharper color than Sea Devils and is more suspenseful; more importantly, Hudson has a broader range of character. Where the film falls apart is in its attempt to be based on the life of Hardin. The real gunslinger wasn’t an honest guy just trying to buy a white cottage for his gal, but a massacring maniac who shot at least 27 men, all documented in newspapers, and many more undocumented in the press. He notoriously shot one hotel guest while the guest was sleeping and snoring too loudly — a far cry from Hudson’s innocent troublemaker.

Rock Hudson amazingly made four more movies in 1953: Gun Fury (also directed by Raoul Walsh!), Seminole, The Golden Blade and Back to God’s Country. His career ended when he had to abandon his role on the TV soap opera Dynasty due to AIDs-related illness (he was the first celebrity to announce being a victim of the virus; this act helped propel the illness into public conversation).

Sea Devils was available on VCI Entertainment DVD (now out of print); The Lawless Breed has been available in several DVD iterations; the best is probably as a part of Universal’s 2007 Classic Western Round-Up Volume 1: the Franchise Collection.

—Michael R. Neno, 2025 February 16