回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Since Barbara could find no evidence of other women, though she accused him of sleeping with everyone, she enjoyed rubbing his “affair” with Couser down his throat.
Convinced he was losing his manhood, Taylor went to a psychologist. The doctor had known Bob for many years on a social basis, and was well acquainted with Ruth and Barbara.
“Taylor was extremely upset. He told me everything. It wasn’t a professional call really, but there was no doubt in my mind he needed help. I asked him directly whether he had had any urge to be with a man.”
“Christ, that makes me sick! Never! Never!I go for women period! Homos have pestered me for years . . . God damn queers!”
“Have you been attracted to any women lately?”
“I can look at a sexy girl walking down the street and get a God damn hot sensation in my insides!”
Taylor went on to explain that he “thought the world of Barbara” and would be the first one to admit he needed her, but perhaps not as much since he had been in the Navy. They annoyed each other and he didn’t appreciate being told what to do anymore. “Maybe I grew up in the Navy, how do I know? We are both trying like hell right now, and Barbara does things for me she never would have done five years ago, but I see so many things I didn’t see before. I don’t want to lose her as a friend and for that matter, as a wife, but things are sure not working out. It’s my fault . . .”
The discussion continued, but the important factor was Taylor’s fear he was a homosexual. The doctor assured Bob he was not, but that only he and he alone would have to find that out for himself.

Though Bob found it difficult to see another woman, he did strike up a “friendship” with Ava Gardner, his co-star inThe Bribe. She was also close to Clark Gable and a “good Joe”—understanding,witty, direct and sexy.
Bob enjoyed her company and they met occasionally—sometimes at Ruth’s house, much to her distress. More than ever she was convinced that actors were sinners and that Hollywood was evil. She tried again to get Bob interested in religion and though he did not refuse her pamphlets and listened intently to her philosophies on Christ’s coming soon to pick those he wanted to “live with him in his house,” Bob flatly declined any offers to attend her prayer meetings. He told her she had not failed to bring him up with the proper beliefs and this was something he would never forget, but he wasn’t the type to prove it to anybody.
He also tried not to say “God damn” in her presence, but somehow it always came out. It was part of his vocabulary. “Tryto overlook it, Mother.”
“I have been overlooking a lot these days,son.”

On July 1, 1948, Dore Schary signed a contract with MGM as vice-president in charge of production. He brought new ideas that did not exactly agree with Mayer’s, though it was Mayer who had urged Schary to come with his studio. But Schary’s appointment affected many contract players. Gable was one. He told Schary that movies should be made to entertain rather than to make people think. Taylor agreed with Gable, but was not yet feeling the drastic changes that were taking place.
Gable was being given roles that he considered insulting and spoke his piece. He told Taylor, “Just you wait, Baby, Mayer’s in trouble. Not that I care particularly—he’s your father, not mine—but I don’t like the smell of dead fish around here.”
Schary’s first disagreement with Mayer was over the film Battleground. Schary bought it from Howard Hughes (RKO). alongwith Ivanhoe, and he went even further and arranged for Quo Vadis to be rewritten for MGM’s release.
Articles began appearing in the newspaper about Schary’s “taking over MGM” and the problems confronting Mayer.
Taylor had been assigned to do The Conspirator in England. He neither liked nor disliked the script, but was not too keen on portraying a Communist Agent—“Except that I get it in the end.” He met with Mayer before leaving for Europe.
“Have a good trip, Bob. You like England,don’t you?”
“Yeah, I always said the English people are swingers but they don’t go around bragging about it.”
“Bob, there are going to be some changes around here—maybe when you’re gone, I don’t know. I can’t talk about it right now, but I want you to know I’ll do my best where you’re concerned. As a matter of fact, I was going through some old things here in my desk and came across a fan letter to you. Let me read it to you—for old times:

“Who makes the Co-eds shout with glee
Forget about Fraternity
As movie bound they rush to see
ROBERT TAYLOR
Who makes old ladies shelve their canes
Forget about their aches and pains
And think of moonlit summer lanes
ROBERT TAYLOR
Who makes the housewife shiver and shrill
With ecstasy they rave and thrill
Til husbands want to kill
ROBERT TAYLOR
What makes these women act so dumb
and movies go til kingdom come
and think their old men so much scum
ROBERT TAYLOR
“How about that one,Bob?”
“Those were the days, L.B., but I don’t think about them anymore.”

On November 2, 1949, a beautiful seventeen-year-old actress said, “This is the day I grew up. I started working on The Conspirator and no one can say I am a child in this picture because I am playing Robert Taylor’s wife!”
“He is just as wonderful as everyone in Hollywood told me he was. I have to admit I did get nervous when he took me in his arms and made love to me, but the director said I shouldn’t be upset.”
The young lady speaking was ElizabethTaylor and before her first romantic scene with Robert Taylor she was studyingher algebra lesson in the little studio school room near the set. When class was dismissed, she rushed out the door, stood for a moment while she dabbed her nose with a powder puff and put some perfume behind her ears.
When the scene was completed, she walked ina daze to her dressing room, flopped in a chair and with childish ecstasy said to her hairdresser, “I've just been kissed by Robert Taylor!"
She picked up her English textbook, looked at it for a minute and threw it on the floor. "I’ll never be ready for class. I’m so excited! Why ,do you know he is thirty-eight years old? And he said I was talented, but he did have to teach me one thing—how to powder down my lips. ”
Before Bob left for England to make The Conspirator, he wrote to Tom Purvis, “I’m headin’ for Europe to do a picture with a little girl I think might be something one day! Think her first name is Elizabeth but I know we have Taylor in common.”

He gave Elizabeth Taylor her first screen kiss, and there was quite a commotion on the set when it took place. She was trembling and he thought it was cute, but when the scene was over, he called his press agent in Hollywood: “I think this ‘first kiss’ business is going a little too far. Try to keep the publicity to a minimum. I don’t need it and why tease a little girl like that?”
He was too late. The news was out almost before it happened. Taylor sent telegrams, made phone calls and pleaded with MGM to stop building up such a simple thing like a kiss.
As shooting of the movie progressed, Taylor began to take notice that “the little girl” wasn’t so little after all. “She was stacked! But I didn’t realize it until she appeared on the set in a negligee. Good God, she was just a child, but I couldn’t help myself.”
It was one of the few times in his life he found it possible to control his attraction to a woman, but unfortunately not “from the waist down!” “It wouldn’t have been so bad if the scene were being shot sitting down, but standing up it would have been obvious to everyone if I didn’t do something about it.”
He spoke to the cameramen and explained his“physical situation,” and they said they would try to focus the camera on his above the waist. “Doggone, I spent the entire day in that condition and I couldn’t understand it. She was only seventeen years old and I certainly wasn’t going to try to seduce her. I might have tried a few years later when we did another movie together, but she was in love with Michael Wilding and wasn’t lookin’ at anyone else!”

When he returned to Hollywood he filmed Ambush, a Western, with Arlene Dahl, a new arrival in Glamour City. She said, "A year earlier I had written Robert Taylor from Minnersota for an autogrphed photo and here I am, making love to him on the screen!"
Immediately following Ambush, MGM gave him the role of a Shoshone Indian who wins the Congressional Medal of Honor at Gettysburg in Devil's Doorway. Many said Taylor was a peculiar choice to play a full-blooded Indian, but the make-up people had no problem. He looked every bit the part. However, the script wa weak and the entire cast had little with which to work.
Ambush and Devil's Doorway were rated "Good." Taylor still considered himself in a professional slump and repeated himself in all his interviews:"I'm the lukiest guy in the world, " or "I don't miss not having my clothes torn off my back," or "I'm goin' fishin'," and "i'm still a punk kid from Nebraska!"

As Marcus Vinicius his ribs did not stick out. He said he was prone to overweight but learned to eat properly in Rome, even though he ate pasta twice a day.
Tom Purvis flew over to Italy to spend a few weeks with Bob. “My God, I didn’t know what the hell I was eating when that chef prepared dinner for us at the apartment. Taylor and I would just sit there at the table while plates of food were served. I don’t know how many times we asked each other what we were eating. We both loved to eat, but that was ridiculous! I didn't want to offend Bob and he didn’t want to offend the chef. When I got back home my wife asked me what kinda food I had and she coulda kicked me when I answered, ‘Don’t know.’”
Taylor kept his word about not being seen in public and even though there were women, he was more than discreet. He even took Purvis to out-of-the-way restaurants.
He was up at 5 A.M. every day and in bed by10. The filming of Quo Vadis was tedious. Deborah Kerr, who portrayed the Christian slave girl, Lygia, said, “The movie was made under terribly difficult conditions, enormous heat and many irritations, but at all times Bob was good-natured and un-fussy.

“When one thinks of his extraordinary good looks, he had every right to be a bit spoiled, but not Bob. He was unassuming, good natured and had a wonderful sense of humor.
“I only made the one movie with him—Quo Vadis—but it was almost like making three movies, it went on so long.
“I felt that Bob was a much better actor than he was given credit for. His outstanding handsomeness inevitably channeled him into ‘hero’ roles, but will anyone forget how excellent he was playing a heavy in Johnny Eager. I certainly won’t, nor shall I ever forget Bob.”
Taylor was not known to forget or muff his lines, but working underneath the mammoth canvas at Cinecitta Studios, proved to be a problem. The winds were strong and the noisy flapping of the canvas interfered with the sound.
Taylor and Miss Kerr had attempted a scene together but were stopped several times because of the wind. When things quieted down, the director wanted to do the scene quickly, but Bob muffed his lines three times. They tried it again and again until finally it went smoothly.
Bob walked over to Purvis. “God damn, this has never happened to me. Well it’s over.”

Except it wasn’t. The director came over toTaylor and told him the dialogue was fne, but the microphone had picker up some noise caused by the wind.
"When you goof as many times as I did," Taylor moaned, “nothing comes out right. Thought I’d never get through with that one particular scene.”
News reached Barbara that Bob was “playing around” in Rome.The gossip columns hinted he was seen with a number of women. Rumors persisted until finally one woman in particular was revealed—Lia DiLeo, a bit player.
The Quo Vadis cast laughed it off and everyone said it was a lot of nonsense—probably publicity. Purvis was convinced there was nothing going on. He said Lis had called Bob from the lobby. “He asked me to stay in the apartment while she was there. He told me she was an aspiring actress and it might make the wrong impression if he were alone with her.
“At that time I was sure there was nothing going on between them. Seemed to me it was the usual ‘crush on a movie star’ or ‘maybe you can get me into the movies’ angle.”

Taylor completed Quo Vadis in December, 1950, and was preparing to leave his apartment for the airport. He had heard little from Barbara since her departure three months before, and though he tried to keep his name out of the papers to avoid annoying her further, he knew his marriage was over. However,he did not want to hurt her any more than he had already. Their marriage had lasted over ten years—a long time by Hollywood standards. And this, after all, was a very important element of his clean and wholesome image.
When he appeared in the lobby of his apartment house with his baggage, Lia was waiting for him! He was taken by surprise when she flung herself into his arms!
He held her as she covered his face with loving kisses . . . and the press cameras clicked.
Taylor had been neatly framed! He smiled, but pushed her away very gently and hurried to his limousine. Lia did not follow him, but she was ready to make a statement to the reporters whom she had cleverly brought with her.

She said she was the former wife of the king’s attorney, but now she was “Robert Taylor’s big love,” and had been throughout the filming of Quo Vadis: “He is tired of her [Barbara] and he told me so!”
Taylor refused comment at the airport and returned to Hollywood, where the pictures of him and Lia were front-page news. He completely ignored the press and went home.
The newspapers announced that the Taylors had separated, but within a few days after Bob’s arrival in Hollywood, they announced they were going to San Francisco. It was revealed Taylor was admitted to a hospital there.
He was operated on for the removal of a double hernia and Barbara remained at his bedside every minute.

“Those hours he was on the operating table were the worst I have ever spent in my life,” she told Louella Parsons.
When asked what plans they had, Barbara said they were going on a three-month vacation together, but instead went to Palm Springs alone and Barbara remained incommunicado at the home of friends in Hollywood.
In a matter of days the divorce announcement was made, on December 16, 1950, through their press agent, Helen Ferguson.
She called Louella Parson, but was unable to read the formal statement and broke down in tears. She handed the paper to Howard Strickling, head of publicity at MGM, who had been asked by Bob to “be very gentle with Helen at this time.”

In a joint statement, the Taylors said,
“In the past few years, because of professional requirements, we have been separated just too often and too long. Our sincere and continued efforts to maintain our marriage have failed.
“We are deeply disappointed that we could nnot solve our problems. We really tried. We unhappily and reluctantly admit what we have to denied to even our cloest friends, because we wanted to work things out together in as much privacy as possible. There will be a California divorce. Neither of us has any other romantic interest whatsoever.”
The Stanwyck-Taylor marriage was often pointed out as the one perfect example that two famous film stars could have separate careers and a happy marriage, too.
“That was the trouble,” Barbara said. “Separate careers! We have been separated just too often and too long.
“I have said many times I was a long-distance-telephone wife. Bob and I never could get together. When I was in a picture, he was on vacation. When I was off for a few weeks, he was sent someplace halfway around the world.
“The best we could do, usually, was shake hands at the door as we came in and out.”

Louella Parsons wrote, “It is almost certain that this Italian girl had nothing to do with the Taylors’ decision to part. Trouble started long before Bob went to Rome.
“I spoke to Barbara and I am inclined to think when they decided to end their marriage it came suddenly.
“It was Bob who asked for his freedom!”
On February 21, 1951, Barbara Stanwyck, looking chic in a slim, toast-colored suit with a matching hat topping her gray curls, told the court in a three-minute hearing (one of the shortest movie divorces on record) that her husband, Robert Taylor, was tried of being married and wanted to be a bachelor again.
“He said he had enjoyed his freedom during the months he was making a movie in Italy. He wanted to be able to continue his life without restrictions.
“I was very shocked and very grieved over it and I was quite ill. For several weeks I was under the care of my physician.”