回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Barbara was so emotionally upset over the divorce that she immediately moved out of their mansion and auctioned off the majority of the furniture.
The newspaper reported that one of the first items to be offered would be Taylor’sbed. Included in the more than 600 articles to go on the block were 65 paintings, among them a Renoir and a series of ten studies of a pioneer woman of the West by Fredric Remington.
Barbara’s bed went for ＄360, but Bob’s laced leather headboard and end table built into it—including a carved wooden horse supporting a lamp—sold for ＄630.
Two days after the auction, Barbara and Bob were seen dining at Ciro’s in Hollywood. She told reporters, “There’s no use trying to keep it a secret. I’m carrying a torch for Bob, but it is too early to say whether or not we will be reconciled.”
She said it was her second date with Taylor since the divorce decree, which would not become final until a year from the date it was granted.Taylor wouldn’t comment, but Barbara said firmly, “There will be no other man in my life!”

Bob was trying to recapture what he and Barbara had when they were courting in the late thirties. Though he kept quiet in public, he did confide to close friends that he hoped seeing Barbara occasionally would bring them closer together, and he was adamant about trying to keep what he thought was an “unusual” marriage together.
Taylor did not want divorce, but Barbara had threatened him in Rome and to her surprise, he took her up on it. She wanted to frighten him, to bring him to his senses.Though she was not one to forgive and forget, she might have “just this once.”
The night referred to by Helen Ferguson in her testimony at the divorce trial, when she ran to Barbara’s side, was the night Taylor asked Barbara for his freedom—legally—and in a rage she promised that he would get his divorce but that she would bleed him for the rest of his life.

Those who knew the Taylors remarked that Bob did lean on Barbara too much during their marriage. He wasn’t weak, but he was rather innocent about life and women when he met her.
Someone said she always told Bob what to do and how to go about it. “Could anyone forget when she gave him that new convertible? Why, she even told him how to drive it!”
Another observer said, “They could find nothing mutual to do in their spare time. If Barbara had learned to fly or at least forced herself to suffer through a few flights with him occasionally, they might have made a go of it.”
Another: “They got tried of each other and their way of life. Barbara was and always will be a dedicated actress and I think her career came first even though she will never love anyone but Bob.”
Another: “They should have adopted children. Bob loves kids and was devoted to Dion. But Barbara didn’t have time to devote to them. She and Bob had one thing in common—the movie industry—period!”
Another: “As Bob matured he wanted a wife, not a sparring partner or counselor and certainly not a mother . . . he has one of those!”

Taylor would not talk about Barbara. He was hounded for awhile about Miss Dileo, but he remarked, “What about her? I’m here, aren’t I? Is she with me?
“I’m not going to carry on a transcontinental argument [New York to Rome], but I do not plan to marry anyone at present. It’s wonderful to be foot-loose and fancy-free!”
He was sipping champagne with Rex Harrison and a group of friends but came to the restaurant alone. He was never linked with women during 1951 except for Barbara, but in his usual discreet manner he was getting around . . .
Though he denied everything that was supposed to have occurred in Italy—especially Miss DiLeo—he had gone out with many girls of all types in Rome. They were not actress or well known in any sense of the word. He always took them to small places outside of town.

When his divorce was announced he was asked about his love life and he replied, “Well, what about it? I’ve got nothing to hide. My social life’s an open book these days. In fact everybody’s getting into the act. I’ve read so many different things about myself that half the time even I can’t keep up with what I’m doing—or rather what I am supposed to be doing.”
One of Taylor’s secret dates was the well-known honey-blonde actress Virginia Grey. She had been Clark Gable’s “favorite” for seven years until he eloped with Lady Ashley. Several days after his marriage was announced Virginia received a call from a friend who asked if it was all right to give Robert Taylor her telephone number and she agreed.
He called her and said he would bring over some steaks, wine and records. It was obvious to her he did not want to be seen in public, so they spent their evenings at her place.

Virginia Grey said, “He would never talk about Barbara, but his divorce wasn’t final yet and I just took it for granted he didn’t want to be seen in public with another woman. Barbara was still in love with him—everybody knew that—and I found out the hard way that she resented any woman Bob dated. When I met her accidentally a few years later,what she had to say to me I cannot quote, but I had done the unpardonable . . .I had gone out with Bob Taylor.”
She explained that he was complete mystery to her. After spending their first evening together she left the room for a minute and when she returned he had disappeared.
Taylor had simply decided it was time to go home, and that’s exactly what he did. When he telephoned her a week later he never mentioned the incident, but he would do this often.

She said Bob had a helplessness about himself—always wanting or starting to say something, but could put words on paper better than speak them because of his shyness. He feared rejection, one of the reasons he had someone else call for her telephone number, rather than just introducing himself.
“But Bob was warm and wonderful,” Miss Grey said. “When we were together I forgot he was Robert Taylor. He made me interested because he was so unpredictable. Also, I don’t think Bob liked himself very much and was not a happy man when I knew him. He was a real introvert when it came to a man and woman relationship.”
She compared him to Gable: “You could get to know them so far and then—the wall!”
When Gable returned from his honeymoon he tried to resume his relationship with Virginia and she was forced to change her telephone number. Taylor was in Utah at the time doing a movie and when he flew back for a few days he tried to call her but was told by the operator he could not have the new number. He thought she was trying to avoid him and dropped her a note saying, “Being the kind of guy who doesn’t need a building to fall on me to get the idea, I gave up!”

The studio was slowly getting rid of their long-time contract stars and Gable suspected he would be next, but he beat them to it by getting his attorneys to break the contract. The King said at his farewell luncheon—“I wish to pay tribute to my friends and associates who no longer are alive!” Later when they offered him half of the profits if he would do a film for them, he told his agent to rub it in. “And when you get their best offer, tell them to take their money, their studio, their cameras and lighting equipment and shove it up their ass!” (Chester Williams, GABLE, (NewYork: Fleet Press, 1968), pp.116&117.)
Taylor, however, continued to sign new contracts with better money but said he didn’t get that lump in his throat when he put his signature on the dotted line without Mayer standing beside him—both men grinning ear to ear.
He flew his plane to his favorite spots, where there was always a cowpoke somewhere in the Midwest waiting for him to pop in for some hunting or fishing, or he caught up with some of his cronies in the Northwest. North Dakota was another haunt where pheasant hunting was especially good.

Taylor was the jumpy type, and he loved to drive as long as he had gallons of black coffee with him. Once he drove from Illinois to Los Angeles in three and a half days—a usual five-day trip. Sometimes he even carried his own gasoline.
He liked rugged men—Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Keenan Wynn and of course his old buddies, Couser and Purvis. He even liked and kept in touch with “Redhorse” Meyes, his former instructor in the Navy, because “Redhorse” was wilder than a marsh hare—always picking fights and taking too many chances.
Purvis said, “Bob kept in touch with everyone—if he liked you. But if you threw him a curve, he was ‘off you forever.’ He became a fanatic about privacy after his divorce, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the break-up of his marriage—he had been kicked around so much and never had any time to himself.”

Taylor was so forty years old. It had taken him a long time to reach maturity, but he was taking advantage of it. Many of his friends said he was running away, but actually he was always running TO something. Taylor was not known to roam about aimlessly. He had a purpose to anything he did.
On one of his frequent plane trips from Los Angeles to New York, he got hungry and landed in Palm Springs to see what a friend was cooking for breakfast, liked what he tasted, ate, and flew to New Orleans to renew an old friendship with a restaurateur who had a set of diamond-encrusted teeth.
He picked up several friends along the way to New York,and one night invited the entire Copacabana chorus line out for dinner.
But he was still very sensitive about his good looks and any reference to his appearance cracked his aplomb.

Having dinner one night with friends, he was approached by a girl who took one good long look at him and said, with unbelievable gaucherie, “Gee, you’re the most beautiful man in the world!”
Taylor quite literally paled, got up from a half-finished meal and left the premises alone.
His friends, expecting him to return after he cooled off, said that Bob hopped into a cab and took off for the airport. He flew off in his plane—for somewhere.
In Hollywood he was seen with several cute blondes—usually at a hamburger joint, anywhere that he wasn’t expected. When he did date any woman who was well-known, he did not go out in public. Because of this his press agents had to make up storied about him—usually about a picture he was going to do or a house he was going to build or his kindness toward Barbara.

The reporters admitted they couldn’t find him, but as usual he did come forth and speak up when he was angry or fed up with articles that were being printed about him.
“I keep reading that I’m the loneliest guy in Hollywood. If I read it five more times maybe I’ll begin to believe it. Then I could have a hell of a time wallowing around in self-pity, except for one thing—I’m not given to self-pity!”
“I get the picture through articles written about me that I’m slumped in a cell-like room, night after night, surrounded by bats.
“That’s interesting, but inaccurate.
“In fact, I lead what I consider a very happy life—I mean a life that suits Robert Taylor just fine. The ‘weepers’ insist I’m just keeping a stiff upper lip or whistling past the graveyard.
“It seems almost impossible for a naturally solitary person like myself to convince the ‘joiners’ that I’m pretty happy the way I am! Anyone like me—and I’ll bet there are plenty—knows just what I’m talking about. We don’t feel sorry for ourselves. We like it
“I don’t go to Hollywood parties because I’m not invited to any. I have exactly two friends in Hollywood and that might be stretching it.
“Let me tell you something—in Hollywood a party is not a party unless it is one of those ‘Everybody who was anybody was there’.
“What a God damn crushing blow it must be to 159,890,000 Americans to find out that they’re not anybody!
“I read about them like everyone else and I don’t lose any sleep over it. Besides, you can’t have the social whirl without losing your freedom.”

He carried his typewriter wherever he went and wrote to everyone. Sometimes his letters were informative, if he were writing to a close buddy, but more often he would type for something to do—almost as if he were talking, which he didn’t like to do.
He didn’t go out of his way to make friends, but he would go out of his way for a friend.
On one fishing trip to Wyoming with Tom Purvis, they decided to camp out in sleeping bags. They were deep enough in the wilds to have to carry water and canned food for several days. Temperatures were in the low twentiesand Tom, at 6 feet 3 inches, was half out of his sleeping bag. During the night he got thirsty (“We put too much salt on the fish we cooked for dinner and I was swallowing cotton!”) He shivered over to the car when he heard something. It sounded to him like a lot of empty tin cans were being thrown around.

Taylor kidded Tom about the whole incident and said he liked the cold weather.
“Any guy who plays golf in the snow has to,”Tom said. “Why it was cold enough last night to freeze a fire!”
“Why didn’t you shoot the damn thing and make yourself a rug!”
“I didn’t see you runnin’ for your gun, Dilly!”
“You kidding? Me leave my nice warm sleeping accommodations to save you?”
“If you like the cold weather so much, how come your sleeping bag was shakin’ all night?”
“Having a nightmare that I was watchin’ Song of Russia on TV.”
Purvis had only been home a week when he received a seven-foot custom-made sleeping bag with built-in blanket, inflatable mattress, snap-in sheets and pillows. The gift card read, “Don’t wake me up next time you see a harmless bear. Dilly.”