回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Barbara’s friend and press agent testified in her behalf. “I went to Barbara’s house and found her in a tragic emotional state. She said, ‘I am going to give Bob the freedom he wants!’”
Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke interrupted her with a terse, “That will be enough. Divorce granted!”
Barbara asked the court for permission to drop the surname Taylor, and she was awarded their ＄100,000 mansion, all furnishings, and 15 per cent of Taylor’s earnings until she remarried or either party died.
As she left court she refused to comment on rumors that her “matinee idol” husband wanted his freedom because he had fallen in love with an Italian beauty. “I don’t know,” she said with a crooked smile, “you’ll have to ask Mr. Taylor about that!”
When she was asked if she had a new boy friend, Barbara widened her eyes and shuddered. “Oh,no! I’ve had enough. I don’t want any more of that!!”

The divorce hearing made headlines, but the following day, February 22, 1951, the shapely Italian bit actress Lia Dileo also had her day:
“BOB’S ‘BIG LOVE’ SEES NO HITCH IN HERPLANS”
Rome: Redheaded Lia Dileo, for whose love Robert Taylor ostensibly broke up with Barbara Stanwyck, today was so little impressed with the “great lover”of American films that she indicated she would rather remain “good friends” with Taylor than marry him.
She admitted she was truly Bob’s true lovewhen he was in Rome, but she said marriage with Taylor didn’t seem to be in the cards, though, “If it depended on him alone I am sure we would marry.”
She said the break-up between the Taylors was inevitable.
“I knew this would happen ever since he was here. He was tried of her and told me so!
She added coldly, “It was evident that after meeting me a divorce was the only possible solution.”
The divorced Lia said she was reluctant to marry again, having had one previous disheartening experience along these lines. “Yet I might yield to his persistence, though after my first marital experience I have become convinced it is better to be good friends than to be hampered by marriage ties.
“I think I shall be very good friends with Robert instead of being his wife,” she concluded frankly.

Miss Dileo posed for photographers in a striped bathing suit that showed off every one of her curves to their best advantage.
Taylor called Tom Purvis in Illinois: “Got to get out of here to hide out. Can you put up with me?”
He flew his Beechcraft to Champagne, Illinois,where Tom drove his car out to the plane on the runway. Taylor hopped in and dropped to the floor.
Purvis had gotten him a small apartment and Bob locked himself up, only going out at night to Tom’s house, donning sunglasses and always squatting on the floor of the car. But after three days he was recognized by someone. “It’s no use, Tom, I’m goin’back!”

In Los Angeles he alternated living with Ralph Couser and his wife, and with Ruth in Brentwood.
Ruth had mixed emotions about her son’s divorce, but she told him to stay as long as he wanted. He slept in the maid’s room.
“Just one thing bothers me, son—all that money you are going to have to pay Barbara, and you gave her that house, too—everything gone!”
“Not everything. I kept my coffee table.”
Ruth sadly remarked that his coffee table wouldn’t keep them out of the poorhouse. And was he going to bring any women to her house? Bob assured her at the present time the last thing on his mind was running around with women, to which Ruth exclaimed, “Thank God!”

Then she rambled on that she had read somewhere the big Hollywood studios were going to release many of their stars. “Will this affect you, son?”
Taylor hadn’t read it in the papers, but the rumors at the studio confirmed what Ruth was saying. Schary’s new regime was taking over and although MGM had pulled itself out of debt, he knew there were going to be cut-backs, and if many of the contract players were not fired, they would undoubtedly quit. Gable had mentioned it to him and asked Bob what he was going to do. Taylor said he’d going along until they booted him out!

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!”

Another woman actress remembers Taylor as a frustratingman to date. Always writing letters, he would correspond with her when he was out of town, including such teasing messages as “Was in town Saturday night but didn’t call. Thought you’d be busy!” (She wasn’t!) Or “It’s lonely here. Don’t know why you didn’t come along!” (She would have!) Or “Read in the papers you might get married. How come I can't get that lucky?” (He never asked!)
In his fashion, Taylor was being kind of complimentary and did it with such simplicity that he was labeled a mystery.
MGM allowed him all the privacy he wanted and kept his personal life out of the papers, but it wasn’t Mayer who was protecting him any more. L.B. had lost control of his empire and stepped down to Dore Schary on August 31, 1951, when he resigned from Metro. When he spoke to Taylor in late 1949 and read the silly poem he had found among his papers, Mayer was setting the scene.
His leaving MGM frightened Taylor. Yet, regardless of how many items were written about this change affecting his career, Schary carried on in Taylor’s behalf. Perhaps his tactics were different from Mayer’s, but Mayer’s “son” was one of the few contract players at MGM who did not suffer during this drastic transition.

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.”