Robert Taylor

Directed 17 United States Navy training films during World War II.

Is Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Garden of Honor, Columbarium of the Evening Star (not accessible to the general public).

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1970.

Had two children with Ursula Thiess : Terrance (b. June 18, 1955) and Tessa (b. 1959).

He holds the Hollywood record for longest contract with one studio (MGM), 24 years from early 1934 to late 1958, and he holds the Hollywood record for lowest contract salary (initially $35 a week, in 1934).

Right-handed Taylor spent weeks perfecting his ability to draw a gun with his left hand in preparation for his role in Billy the Kid .

After doctors predicted that Taylors mother would die before the age of 30, his father became a doctor for the express purpose of curing her of childhood invalidism and was ultimately successful.

He was called "The New King" after Clark Gable s departure from MGM in 1953.

Is portrayed by Terrence E. McNally in The Silent Lovers .

The favorite of all his films was Waterloo Bridge .

His funeral was attended by many Hollywood celebrities, and Ronald Reagan , the Governor of California, gave the eulogy.

He was romantically involved with actresses Virginia Bruce , Irene Hervey , Lia Di Leo , Virginia Grey and Eleanor Parker.

After the war he joined the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals founded in February of 1944 by Sam Wood and Walt Disney.

Actively supported Ronald Reagan s campaign to become the Republican Governor of California in 1966.

Following the success of Knights of the Round Table Taylors movie career declined. He managed to remain at MGM until 1958, when he signed for his own television series, "The Detectives" .

Four episodes of "The Robert Taylor Show" had been produced and a fifth was in line at the time of the sudden cancellation of the unaired series in the summer of 1963. Scripts had been written by Bruce Geller, Leonard Freeman, Tom Seller, and Lawrence Edward Watkin. NBC felt the new series was too controversial.

Supported Thomas E. Dewey in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 and 1956 elections.

His second favorite movie was Camille and his favorite co-star was Greta Garbo.

He and Clark Gable were very good friends, and Taylor was one of the active pallbearers at Gables funeral in November 1960.

He was the first American actor to star in a film made in England, A Yank at Oxford .

He was ranked fourth in box office appeal in 1936, third in 1937 and sixth in 1938.

He left his signature, footprints and handprints, together with those of Barbara Stanwyck , in the cement in the forecourt of Graumans Chinese Theater in Hollywood on June 11, 1941.

He inspired the fictional character called Diabolik , an antihero featured in Italian comics. Diabolik was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in 1962, and his features were graphically inspired by Taylor: dark hair with a distinctive widows peak and striking blue eyes and eyebrows.

His flying interest emerged after the movie Flight Command , when he bought a single-engine plane and took lessons for a pilots license. After World War II, when he served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1945 as a flight instructor and narrator of 17 trainings films, MGM bought him a twin-engine Beechcraft which he flew regularly until the early 1960s.

The twelve-mile section of U.S. Highway 136 between Nebraska towns Beatrice and Filley was officially designated as the Robert Taylor Memorial Highway in 1994 (source: Gage County Historical Society, Beatrice, Nebraska).

His lifelong hobbies included hunting, fishing, flying and writing letters.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in the spring of 1968 after feeling increasingly breathless and tired for some time. He immediately underwent cobalt treatment; however, he did not give up smoking until shortly before undergoing major surgery to remove his entire right lung on 8 October 1968.

In a feature in the May 21, 1961, Family Weekly magazine, Taylor stated he became a hunter during his more mature years after he met actor Gary Cooper at Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1939. Occasional hunting companions of note were novelist Ernest Hemingway and actors Wallace Beery , Clark Gable , Robert Stack and John Wayne.

He was a music major at Doane College from 1929 to 1931 and played the cello in the trio "The Harmony Boys", in the Doane String Quartet, and in the Doane Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska. When he was in Hollywood, he regularly attended the annual concerts given each year at the Hollywood Bowl.

After their divorce, his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck auctioned off their $100,000 home at 423 North Faring Road, in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, and all its furnishings, and collected 15 percent of Taylors earnings until he died in 1969.

He starred in one of the first post-World War II pro-Indian movies of the American cinema, Devils Doorway (his first western, although Delmer Daves Broken Arrow was released one month before). Devils Doorway was completed first but held back from release because of the nervousness of MGMs studio brass over the subject matter.

He started smoking in his early teens and often smoked 3-5 packs of cigarettes a day as an adult.

Joined the historical theatrical club The Lambs in 1939.

Taylors only musical was "Broadway Melody of 1936." He sang for the only time in his career, a song called "Ive Got a Feeling Youre Fooling.".

After he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Taylors films were banned in Soviet-occupied Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Communists called for a boycott of his films in France.

Taylor was given his first screen test by Samuel Goldwyn with a 14-day option in 1933, but nothing came of it.

"Magnificent Obsession" was the film that made Taylor a major star. It did the same for Rock Hudson when Universal remade it in 1954.

Was a Boy Scout.

Father of Sean Taylor .

The Childrens Casting Directory for January-March, 1938, lists him as fourteen years old.

Was in the movie "The Mystery of Natalie Wood" with three actors (Paul Mazursky, George Chakiris, and Robert Hyatt) who had each worked with the American actor that shares his name. He played director Nicholas Ray who had himself worked with the late actor.

Won the chance to be an extra in Strange Bedfellows but the casting company never called him back.

Was turned down from several Australian metropolitan Film Schools, due to filling their rural quota of students, so is determine to prove you dont need to be from the city to make a successful film career.

Rob does all of his own stunts. To date he has performed and choreographed fight scenes, had wood broken across his back, thrown himself down hills and jumped over a safety railing dropping 2.5 metres into the back of a car.

DJ in a nightclub

Spending spare time writing short film scripts

Studying digital media to incorporate in future films.

I must confess that I objected strenuously to doing,Song of Russia (1944) at the time it was made. I felt that it,to my way of thinking at least, did contain Communist propaganda.

[About his childhood in Nebraska] I was not--I still am not--gregarious.

I got $35 a week and my mother, grandmother and I had to live on it.

"Know yourself", said the wise old Greeks. That is the simple but,profound maxim which, I am convinced, has been largely responsible for,my feet stepping firmly up the movie ladder. Unless you do know,yourself, your capabilities, and--what is perhaps more important,still--your limitations, then opportunity will go on knocking on your,door in vain. If you analyze yourself and find out your own strength,and weaknesses, then you have taken the first step towards,understanding others and being able to interpret them. In its more,direct application to the film business this will result in there being,less likelihood of any miscasting. And, by carrying out these,principles I very soon learned to resist the temptation of "flying,high" and playing roles for which I was temperamentally and physically,unsuited. I have rigorously kept to that rule of only playing roles for,which I know myself to be fitted.

The Middle East is going to get us into the third world war.