Robert Taylor: Glamorous movie star of Hollywood's golden era, role model of decency, and world patriot.
Copyright © 2009 by E. A. Kral
One of Hollywood's most glamorous movie stars in history was Nebraska native Robert Taylor, who appeared in over 80 motion picture and television films from 1934 to 1969. Known for his leading roles opposite many of the most renowned actresses in show business, including Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lana Turner, he also starred from 1959 to 1962 in his own television series The Detectives.
And he was not only narrator of two Academy Award-winning documentaries but also co-recipient with Alan Ladd of the Golden Globe for 1953 as world's male film favorite, the same year Marilyn Monroe was world's female film favorite.
Within three years after signing a contract as a professional actor, he had risen to stardom and achieved high Box Office rankings, prompting the London Observer to assert that "1936 will go on record as the year of Edward VIII, the Spanish War, and Robert Taylor." And the January 18, 1937 Time magazine called him "cinema's most passionately admired matinee idol since the late Rudolph Valentino."
In January 1937, he and actress Jean Harlow attended the birthday celebration of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and by year's end, Taylor placed second to legendary Clark Gable in a "King of Hollywood" poll. The February 19, 1938 issue of Saturday Evening Post featured a Norman Rockwell cover illustration that showed two college girls admiring a photograph of Taylor, the same year Edgar Guest's poem "Valentine" closed with a reference to him.
Despite his success and worldwide fame at 25 years of age and beyond, Taylor remained a unique individual in the entertainment industry, for he had kept his character traits and values from his formative years in Gage County, Nebraska, where he was born Spangler Arlington Brugh on August 5, 1911 in Filley, a village of 194 persons. An only child, he grew up in nearby Beatrice, population 9,664, where his father was an osteopath. His mother suffered from occasional illness, but his parents' relationship based on mutual love and respect set a lasting example for Arlington, or Arly, as he was known.
The family belonged to the Centenary United Methodist Church, though Arlington also joined the Order of DeMolay, a nonsectarian group that promotes moral teachings. His work ethic and responsibility were also fostered by parental discipline, home chores, and summer jobs. For almost ten years, he kept his pony at the Anthony and Rose Tyser Shimerda farm on the south edge of the city, where the Brughs sometimes stayed in a cabin, hunted, and fished.
In the Beatrice Public Schools, he had normal playground experiences, but also spent time at his father's medical office, and read books at home. At the age of ten, he started piano lessons, and music supervisor B. P. Osborn convinced him "the cello was the instrument for a gentleman." His mother arranged for his traveling 40 miles to Lincoln for private cello lessons with Herbert E. Gray from 1925 to 1929.
While participating in school music activities and a community orchestra, he appeared before various groups after election as the first student body president in Junior High. In dramatics class, he had important roles in two productions, and took part in a play staged by adults in the community. At the annual state drama contest, he was state champion in the oratorical category, and locally excelled in academics. Upon graduation from Beatrice High School in 1929, Arlington attended Doane College at Crete, about 33 miles from home.
During his two years at Doane, he registered with the Department of Music, where Gray was a part-time teacher, and played the cello in a string quartet and the orchestra. After becoming part of a trio called "The Harmony Boys", he performed in the summers of 1930 and 1931 at radio station KMMJ in Clay Center, located 65 miles west of Crete.
While regarding dramatics as a hobby, he played various roles in several plays directed by speech instructor Mary Ellen Inglis, who he later complimented for the part she had in starting him toward his career. Despite advantages other Doane students did not have, Arlington maintained a conservative lifestyle, was well-liked, and remained in close contact with his parents. More about his formative years may be found in a 48-page supplement published with the October 8, 1993 Beatrice Daily Sun and a cover article in Nebraska History, Vol 75 (Winter 1994).
When Herbert Gray decided to fill a teaching vacancy at Pomona College in Claremont, California in the fall of 1931, Arlington also transferred to Pomona, and prepared for a business career. Notable participation in college plays at Pomona included his December 1932 role in R. C. Sheriff's World War I drama Journey's End, which was observed by Ben Piazza, a talent scout for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. It resulted in his dramatic instruction from MGM coach Oliver Hinsdell before earning a bachelor's degree in June 1933.
After his father had unexpectedly died in October 1933, Arlington and his mother settled in Hollywood, where he re-enrolled in the MGM dramatic school, and on February 6, 1934 signed a contract with MGM for $35 per week, which made him the lowest-paid actor in Hollywood history, where he remained for 25 years, longer than any other star at any Hollywood studio. He was also given the name Robert Taylor to increase his general appeal to more Americans.
It was Taylor's good fortune to work for MGM, which became the most renowned of eight major motion picture companies in Hollywood, making well over 1,000 films during the golden era from about 1925 to 1960. According to John D. Eames, author of The MGM Story, 2nd Rev Ed (Crown, 1982), the studio in Culver City "grew from its original 22 acres to more than 275, with its own police force, fire department, and post office."
Under Louis B. Mayer, its chief executive from 1924 to 1951, the vision of MGM movies not only offered escape from such hardships as the economic depression of the 1930s and the World War II years but also clean, wholesome entertainment with respect for family values.
During this era, too, the enforcement of the Production Code after June 1934 helped define what was morally acceptable content for United States motion pictures. Peter Hay, author of MGM: When The Lion Roars (Turner, 1991), reported that production standards were partly due to an increase in sex and sensationalism in the movies of the 1920s and the formation of the Roman Catholic church's Legion of Decency for the purpose of rating films.
Taylor's career began when "motion pictures were the leading mass entertainment... but the mounting rivalry of radio had to be met by making pictures bigger," reported Eames. So MGM, known for developing a star system as well as quality and glamour, followed the motto "make it good...make it big... give it class!" By the mid-1930s, it had about 4,000 employees, and made an average of 40 to 50 films a year. And some of its productions over the decades such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain and Ben Hur became enduring classics.
MGM was also famous for its stable of stars, often proclaiming it had "more stars than there are in heaven." By its 25th anniversary in 1949, it had included in various movies some 80 stars and featured players, many of whom were the biggest in Hollywood history, such as Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, and Taylor.
Several were featured in Hollywood biographer Jane Ellen Wayne's The Golden Girls of MGM (Carroll and Graf, 2003) and The Leading Men of MGM (Carroll and Graf, 2005), the latter including a chapter on Taylor. Also author of The Life of Robert Taylor (Warner, 1973; Robson, 1987; St. Martin's Press, 1989), the first book-length biography of him, Wayne eventually used the subtitle "the man with the perfect face."
Taylor had minor roles until 1935 when he gained attention for his performance in Society Doctor, then achieved stardom almost overnight upon playing opposite Irene Dunne in the Universal Studio production Magnificent Obsession that same year. He had leading roles in four succeeding MGM films in 1936, the same year the studio arranged his homecoming celebration in Beatrice on October 28, which attracted an estimated 20,000 people from Nebraska and surrounding states, and was reported by the national press.
One of his most notable performances occurred in the poignant MGM romance Camille, released in 1937, in which he played opposite the legendary Greta Garbo, who received an Oscar nomination for her part. According to author Wayne, one reviewer wrote, in part, "Mr. Taylor, inexperienced, is good. His Armand is dashing and well-tempered and his love scenes are certainly making the pulses beat more quickly."
Appearing in so many tender love stories, however, created a stereotype, and he had grown irritated with ridicule from some male members of the press as well as the mob-like behavior of fans. And Mayer decided to attract a larger portion of males by giving Taylor more "he-man" roles. In 1938, he was the star of the first American film made in England. In A Yank at Oxford, he played a conceited American student at a British university, inspiring one reviewer to assert that "he runs, rows and throws a mean right with scarcely a trace of the posturing matinee idol." Others noticed his hairy chest, which sparked talk about a fashion trend.
That year he also appeared as a boxer in The Crowd Roars after previously taking some sparring lessons from Nebraska-born Max Baer, who was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world in 1934. Wayne quoted a reviewer as stating, "One of the greatest prize fight pictures ever to hit the screen puts Taylor in the fore. As a human hero, he takes his place with Gable among the screen greats." Indeed, his Box Office ranking was fourth in 1936, third in 1937, and sixth in 1938.
Among Taylor's 1939 films was Lady of the Tropics in which he starred opposite Hedy Lamarr, forming what some critics consider the most glamorous couple in any Hollywood movie ever. A year later, after playing a young, unpopular Navy officer who gained respect from the squadron upon rescuing their commander in the drama Flight Command, he learned to fly airplanes in his private life.
In 1940, he was involved in not only one of his most notable performances but also his own favorite film. In the sensitive romance Waterloo Bridge, he played a World War I Army officer who falls in love with a ballerina played by Vivien Leigh, who had previously won an Oscar for her role in the classic Gone with the Wind. Author Wayne quoted a critic who believed that Waterloo Bridge has solid acting throughout, and Eames reported it was one of MGM's major successes that year.
His first Western came in the title role of the 1941 technicolor Billy the Kid, which some authors consider the best of all versions made of this film. And he strengthened his reputation as an action star. A year later, he played opposite the photogenic Lana Turner in the title role of Johnny Eager, a cruel and ruthless gangster who is killed by his enemies at the end. In this melodrama, which is one of Taylor's notable films, co-cast member Van Heflin won an Oscar as best supporting actor for 1942.
In the 1943 war movie Bataan, he played a tough sergeant of a diverse group of American soldiers who lose their lives on a desperate mission against the Japanese. Eames considered it the best of that year's battle movies. And Lawrence J. Quirk, author of The Films of Robert Taylor (Citadel Press, 1975), asserted that it was "one film that many Robert Taylor fans felt should have earned an Academy Award nomination."
While serving in the U.S. Navy for the next two years during World War II, he was considered too old for overseas duty, despite holding a civilian pilot's license, so as an instructor he made 17 training films and narrated an Academy Award-winning feature-length documentary about an aircraft carrier titled The Fighting Lady, released in early 1945.
His postwar years with MGM resumed at a slower pace, though in 1946 he appeared in the suspense-filled melodrama Undercurrent with co-star Katharine Hepburn, who reported that "Robert Taylor was a highly underrated actor with a much bigger talent than suspected." He also narrated the Academy Award-winning documentary about the 1946-47 expedition to Antarctica by Admiral Richard E. Byrd titled The Secret Land, released in 1948.
In the decade of the 1950s, however, he appeared in 22 movies released while under contract with MGM, some of which rated as top ten grossing films, especially those in which he had leading roles as medieval heroes.
The 1951 Quo Vadis? was a costume spectacular that became the most expensive movie produced up to that time ($7 million versus $4 million for the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind). Filmed in Rome, it starred Deborah Kerr opposite Taylor, and grossed over $12 million with popularity on television afterwards. According to Hay, it received eight Oscar nominations,
The 1952 Ivanhoe with Elizabeth Taylor and the 1954 Knights of the Round Table with Ava Gardner were top grossing films. The 1954 Valley of the Kings with Eleanor Parker, the first American movie made in Egypt, led one critic to comment that "Taylor has a role with a bit of meat on it." And the 1955 Quentin Durward with Kay Kendall was considered by Quirk as a fine representative of the medieval costume melodrama that garnered more attention on television in the mid-1970s.
Taylor's performance in The Hunt in 1956 with Debra Paget made it his most notable Western, which Quirk called a landmark film because "it demonstrated what he could accomplish with the right juxtaposition of elements." And Wayne quoted one reviewer as stating that it "is an unusual Western because its characters have some depth--Taylor plays his role well as the--not so much villain--but as a psychopath."
The best performance of his career, according to various critics and authors, occurred in the 1953 Above and Beyond with Eleanor Parker, a semi-documentary of Paul Tibbets, the airman in charge of dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, which prompted an end to World War II. And many believed he should have received an Oscar nomination if not the award. Author Wayne also reported he had volunteered to promote this movie for MGM, even though he usually disliked public appearances, and became the first Hollywood contract player to appear on television when a guest on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.
Upon leaving MGM in 1958, he spent the next decade performing in about a dozen independent films and on television. From 1959 to 1962, he starred in his own weekly television series The Detectives, and from 1966 to 1968 was host and occasional star for the syndicated weekly Death Valley Days.
Both Wayne and Quirk reported that he had refused some scripts because he had believed he was too old for the roles and he did not want to play opposite a woman who was--or looked--twenty years younger.
Throughout his career, he was also appreciated by well-informed members of the film industry. From a Joe Hyams article about Taylor in the April 6, 1957 New York Herald Tribune, author Wayne quoted producer Edwin Knopf as saying, in part, that "he's a fine artist, a no-nonsense guy who studies his script more thoroughly than any actor I know." In agreement was director Richard Thorpe, who added, "He's a rarity. A lot of the big stars are really heels off screen ... But Bob is really a nice guy and it comes through on the screen."
Taylor himself revealed another side of his uniqueness to Hyams in the comment: "Acting is the easiest job in the world, and I'm the luckiest guy. All I have to do is be at the studio on time, and know my lines. The wardrobe department tells me what to wear, the assistant director tells me where to go, and the director tells me what to do. What could be easier?"
An astute summarization of his character came in a simple quote from a Utah farmer who had talked with Taylor while on location: "That's one man who never growed himself an ego!"
As for his private life, he avoided the limelight and admitted he was not very gregarious. His first marriage in 1939 to actress Barbara Stanwyck, a Brooklyn, New York native who had an adopted son from her previous marriage to an abusive husband, ended in divorce 12 years later. They had no children. As reported by Jane Ellen Wayne's The Life and Loves of Barbara Stanwyck (JR Books Ltd, 2009), she had a distinguished career with a 1982 Oscar for lifetime achievement. But they spent time apart due to their filming locations, and she was not enamored with his flying and outdoor interests. Her only visit to his home state was on April 28, 1939 to attend the premiere of her movie Union Pacific in Omaha.
His limited political activity began with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, founded in 1944 by film colony conservatives worried about Communist influence, and with the Screen Actors Guild. As suspected by national leaders, a variety of individuals in the film industry had succumbed to Communist influence, reported Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, Hollywood Party (Forum/Prima, 1998, 2000) and Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star over Hollywood (Encounter Books, 2006).
Though Taylor became unhappy with the House Un-American Activities Committee in May 1947 after investigators unexpectedly revealed his private testimony to the media, reported Linda J. Alexander in Reluctant Witness: Robert Taylor, Hollywood and Communism (Tease, 2008), he and several others cooperated in HUAC's public hearings on Communism at Washington, DC that October.
Seemingly unaware that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had murdered millions of his own people, according to historian Robert Conquest in 1968 and others thereafter, some liberals in the industry protested what they deemed as abuses, and victimized cooperative witnesses until well beyond the collapse of Communism in Europe and Russia itself by the early 1990s.
In the late 1940s, Taylor had become acquainted with British-born Ivy Ellis Pearson Mooring, who had brought her son and husband to America. He set her up in his home free of charge for five years, enabling Ivy to earn a living to pay for the health care of her husband who had a malignant tumor. After that, she remained a close family friend.
His second marriage in 1954 to German-born actress Ursula Schmidt Thiess fulfilled his desire for a family, serving as a father to her two children from a previous marriage as well as two of their own--Terry and Tessa. Much is described in Ursula Thiess' privately published autobiography in 2003 titled "... but I have promises to keep": my life before, with & after Robert Taylor, as he took pride in caring for his family and their 113-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, where he kept some farm animals. As he had done since 1946, he flew to hunting and fishing locations in the West, including Nebraska, where he visited occasionally and had a business interest. He exchanged letters with old friends, too.
In 1966, some California Republican Party members invited Taylor to run for governor, reported Alexander, but he didn't want the job. Instead, his close friend Ronald Reagan ran, and later became the 40th U.S. President.
Robert Taylor died of lung cancer at the age of 57 on June 8, 1969, and in the funeral eulogy delivered by Governor Reagan, he was called "one of the truly great and most enduring stars in the golden era of Hollywood." Indeed, his movies are in the MGM film library purchased in 1985 by Ted Turner for viewing on television.
While his star was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 at 1500 Vine Street, and Doane College awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1963, there were forms of posthumous recognition, such as the 1970 induction into the Cowboy Hall of Fame at Oklahoma City, and an imprint of his 1943 role in Bataan on a postage stamp issued in 1991 by Comoro Island near Africa.
In 1994, the Nebraska State Highway Commission designated the portion of U.S. Highway 136 between Filley and Beatrice as the Robert Taylor Memorial Highway, and in the mid-1990s there was creation of a permanent exhibit on him at the Gage County Museum in Beatrice as well as the holding of two national conferences in the community. In May 2007, the first annual Robert Taylor Scholarship was awarded to a graduating senior at Beatrice High School.
The previously cited biographical sources by Wayne, Quirk, Alexander, and others are suggested as well as the obituary that began on the front page of the June 9, 1969 New York Times. And the fourth book-length biography of him, scheduled to be published about 2010 by Charles Tranberg, is titled Robert Taylor: The Last Movie Star.
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