Spangler Arlington Brugh, for such was the impressive name with which Robert Taylor was born, was already displaying a diversity of talents in his youth in the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School he was a standout track athlete, but he also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician, and played the cello in the school orchestra. After graduating he thought of music as a vocation and started studying music at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. But he was lured westward in the early 1930s - but not to Hollywood as might be thought. He moved to Los Angeles to study medicine at Pomona College. This was not unusual either, for his father was a doctor - and had in fact become one with the initial purpose of curing his wife of childhood invalidism. Prophetically, it was at Pomona (from which he graduated in 1933) that young Taylor also joined the campus theater group and found himself in many lead roles because of his marked handsome features.

He was inspired to go on to the Neely Dixon Dramatic School, but about a year after graduating from Pomona, he was spotted by a MGM talent scout and given a contract in 1934. That same year he appeared in his first movie, though he was a loan-out to Twentieth Century Fox for Handy Andy. He did a MGM short for its "Crime Does Not Pay" series that provided good exposure. But even better the next year he was cast as the lead - another and most fortunate loan-out-role in Universal's Magnificent Obsession" (1935) with Irene Dunne. The story of a happy-go-lucky party guy who inadvertently causes blindness to the young lady he wishes to impress and then becomes a doctor to cure her, was heavily symbolic to Taylor of his own parents relationship. The movie was a big hit, and Taylor had a taste of instant box office stardom.

The public was not wrong; Taylor already showed solid dramatic skill. But as was the case sometimes with other actors with 8x10 glossy features, the critics took a biased view of him as a no-talent flash-in-the-pan. He had to endure some brutal and often unfair reviews through his first years in Hollywood. But Taylor was too professional - already praised as a cooperative and dedicated actor - and too busy - to mind what would soon be laid to rest. In 1935 alone he had seven movies, and by the end of the year he was squarely a leading man with substantial scripts. The next year he was with Greta Garbo in Camille, and for the remainder of the decade the MGM vehicles for him - not to mention a pantheon of top actresses - clicked with audiences.

Though not the film vaults treasures, that first half-decade of movies gave Taylor the opportunity to explore the spectrum of male romantic characters-even though he was young lieutenants or doctors at least three times in that first decade. Some noticeable examples of smart variety in about a year's time were his chip-on-the-shoulder Lee Sheridan in A Yank at Oxford, lady's man/boxer Tommy McCoy in The Crowd Roars (1938), and cynical southern gentleman Blake Cantrell in Stand Up and Fight (1939). By the 1940s similar roles were having to make room for edgier characters: Billy the Kid (his first true western, 1941) and smooth criminal Johnny Eager (1942).

But with the arrival of the war, Taylor was quick to make his contribution to the effort. As an actor, he made two memorable combat movies: Stand by for Action (1942) and the better known Bataan (1943). From 1943-46 he had the rank of lieutenant as a flying instructor in the Naval Air Corps, Transport division, and he directed two flight instruction training films (1943) and other training films for the Navy. Later in 1947 he became involved as a "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee. He stated that his accepting a role in Song of Russia (1944) was bad judgment and considered the film pro- Communist. He also-rather unwittingly-fingered fellow actor Howard Da Silva, whether or not a Communist, as a disruptive source in SAG.

After the war and through the remainder of the decade, Taylor was getting action man roles to match his healthy box office draw, but there were fewer of them being offered. He was getting older, and though into the early 1950s he had one of his best known roles as the faith-challenged General Marcus Vinicius in Quo Vadis, he was seen as a mature lead. Just the same, Taylor still had his dashing good looks--but for a few extra laugh lines. He helped to reinvigorate himself by taking on younger man roles-and pulling them off in fine form. With Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1952) he was back (as once before in 1949) with the dazzling young 'Elizabeth Taylor' , pining for him as the exotic Jewess, Rebecca. With a great script and lots of action (forget about the mismatch of some matte backdrops!), the movie was a smash hit. He had a new look-rakish goatee and longer hair-that fit the youthful allusion. The movie did so well, that MGM opted for a sequel-for want of a better word-centering on the King Arthur legend, Knights of the Round Table. It was not as good, but Taylor had the same look-and it worked.

Taylor continued to push for challenging roles in his dramatic output-the old "pretty face" stigma still seemed to drive him. He played an intriguing and most unlikely character in the Devil's Doorway - an American Indian (dark stained skin with blue eyes!) with a Medal of Honor for heroism in the Civil War who comes home to his considerable land holdings and the continued racial bias and covetousness of his white neighbors. It contained pushing-the-envelope dialog with many thought provoking scenes dealing with the social plight of the Indian. After it he was doing other worthy westerns; the edgy Rogue Cop; and even more swashbuckling in one of the lesser known of Walter Scott's romantic novels-and again successful in a younger man role--The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955). Though his contract with MGM ran out in 1958, he accepted a few more films into the 1960s. Taylor founded his own Robert Taylor Productions in 1958 and moved comfortably into TV work. From 1959 to 1962 he was the star of TV series "The Detectives". And when good friend 'Ronald Reagan' bowed out (politics here he comes) of TV's popular western anthology "Death Valley Days", Taylor took over as host and sometime actor (1966-68) until his passing. Jane Ellen Wayne wrote a biography "Robert Taylor: The Man with the Perfect Face." No doubt he would have cringed at that title.


Directed 17 United States Navy training films during World War II. MGM's publicity department released these measurements for Robert Taylor in 1938: Chest 43" / Waist 30" / Hips 37" / Thighs 23" / Calf 15" / Biceps 14.75" / Forearm 12" / Wrists 7" / Neck 16" 2 children with Ursula Thiess: Terrance (b. June 18, 1955) and Tessa (b. 1959) He holds Hollywood record for longest contract with one studio (MGM) 24 years from early 1934 to late 1958 and he holds Hollywood record for lowest contract salary (initially $35 a week, in 1934). His mother had been an invalid since she was a teenager and was only able to get out of bed for 1 hour a week. Doctors predicted she would die before 30. Despondent over his wife's condition, Robert's father decided to take matters into his own hands. He enrolled in medical school and, soon after graduating, he cured his wife. Is portrayed by Terrence E. McNally in The Silent Lovers (1980) (TV) After Taylor died of lung cancer - he was a chain smoker - at the age of 57, he was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. Many Hollywood celebrities attended his funeral, and his best friend 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. Actively supported his best friend Ronald Reagan's campaign to become the Republican Governor of California in 1966. 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. His second favorite movie was Camille (1936) and his favorite co-star was Greta Garbo. In 1954, he was named most popular star abroad by the Hollywood Foreign Press Correspondents Association representing 500 million moviegoers worldwide. He was ranked fourth in Box Office appeal in 1936, third in 1937 and sixth in 1938. He inspired the fictional character called Diabolik (1968), an anti-hero featured in Italian comics. Diabolik was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in 1962, and his features was graphically inspired by Taylor: dark hair with a distinctive widow's peak, and striking blue eyes and eyebrows. The twelve-mile section of U.S. Highway 136 between Beatrice and Filley was officially designated as the Robert Taylor Memorial Highway in 1994 (Source: Gage County Historical Society, Beatrice, Nebraska). He was diagnosed with lung cancer in the spring of 1968, having been 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. 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 Taylor's earnings until he died in 1969. After Taylor's battle with lung cancer was publicly disclosed in the autumn of 1968, he admitted in interviews that he had started smoking in his early teens, and had often smoked three packets of cigarettes a day as an adult.