回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

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.”

Westward the Women was regarded with particular esteem, not so much because of Taylor, but because of the story itself—and the women, which included busty Denise Darcel and broad-beadmed Hope Emerson.
Taylor took the part of a dirty and tough wagonmaster chaperoning a group of “tobacco-chewing ladies” from Chicago to California. With the pictures of their husbands-to-be tucked in their bosoms, the women face rape,death, Indians, an accidental killing of a child, and the birth of a baby in a titled covered wagon.
For exceptional realism, the women’s clothing was not washed for twelve days, only sprayed with deodorizers.
Director William Wellman, worked the cast hard and when he suggested a seven-day filming schedule, Taylor intervened by offering to fly Wellman home every weekend—much to the director’s delight and to everyone else’s satisfaction.
It also gave Taylor a chance to get the cast and crew together to film his own home movie. He made his own posters, ribbing his friends back home, and everyone including Denise Darcel, took part. Tom Purvis was one of the recipients and has the reel to this day.

Taylor arranged every detail of the film and thought it was better than most of the movies he had made for MGM!
Westward the Women was classified as a “picturesque novelty,” but it did bring Taylor back to the screen while Quo Vadis was making the successful rounds of neighborhood theatres.
MGM wanted Taylor in costume epics and assigned him to Ivanhoe with Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Fontaine. This movie was Dore Schary’s pride and joy, but when Taylor read the script he didn’t like it. “I’m not refusing but I’d rather not do it. I kinda like Westerns these days.”
Within weeks, however, Taylor was in England portraying the sturdy and forthright Ivanhoe. The jousting scenes were most authentic and the movie maintained Taylor’s popularity and established him as the public’s Knight in Shinning Armor.
Male audiences liked Ivanhoe . . . and Robert Taylor. The women, of course, were always waiting for their own knight charging on a white horse and again found a substitute for The Sheik and the everlasting Valentino.

Taylor was not displeased with the results of his medieval roles, but considered it extra-duty having to wear the heavy equipment required, saying he felt naked in a business suit. He wrote to Purvis, “I’m gettin’ mighty tired of those iron jockstraps!”
Ruth said he reminded her of the hero Arlington in the novel she was reading before he was born. She raved over Ivanhoe. Bob said he really preferred Western britches because they were more comfortable.
“But those cowboy hats, son, why do you always pull them down over your face. Wear them on top of your head where they belong . . . ”
Bob smiled. His mother had always adjusted his hat, even as a little boy, and he liked to pull it back over his forehead just to tease her, but now it was a habit and it amused him when Ruth threw up her hands before reaching out to show more of his face.

Chapter Ⅹ
Though never involved in a public scandal, Taylor did receive some rather unusual publicity in the early fifties. A story circulated that he almost fell victim to a well-planned blackmail scheme in 1952.
He was in New York at the time and went out to dinner with a business associate. They were seated at a table next to a group of people who recognized him, but appeared nonchalant about having Robert Taylor in the same restaurant and sitting so close to them. However, one of the young ladies, a tall stunning blonde, couldn’t take her eyes off him and he noticed she was deliberately flirting . . . which didn’t bother Taylor in the least. She didn’t smile, but kept her eyes on him. He continued to finish dinner, but between bites, he looked her over thoroughly.
Her companion leaned over and asked Taylor if he’d like to join the group. He declined, but suggested having a nightcap together later in the evening. When they met for drinks, the lovely blonde introduced herself as Rachael.

She asked him how long he would be in New York and he said just for a few days. She said it was a pity because she would love to take him to some fine restaurants in the Village. He accepted her invitation, but preferred they enjoy a gourmet dinner at his hotel. She understood that such a famous star would not want to be bothered with autographs and such. He told her to call him the next morning and they would set up a date.
Taylor left the group and retired for the evening. He was busy and actually forgot Rachael until she called two days later. Did he remember her?
Rachael arrived in a lovely pink silk dress that clung to every curve. “You look beautiful,” he said, “how about a drink?”
They had cocktails and a delicious dinner sent up to Taylor’s suite. Over brandy, he put his arms around her and she responded.
The pink dress hung in the closet, and when Rachael revealed her matching pink undies, she asked Taylor if she could use the phone to call her mother. “It looks like I’ll be here awhile and I wouldn’t want Mommy to worry .. .”

Mother wasn’t home. Could she wait just a few more minutes before they “retired” to the bedroom? This was a very important phone call. Rachael tried again and again, but no answer.
Actually she was not trying to call her mother, rather her accomplice who was waiting in a telephone booth downstairs. He was posing as her husband and the plan was for him to make a fuss outside Taylor’s suite until he was allowed in, at which time the three would talk about how much it was worth to keep the incident quiet.
But Rachael’s so-called husband had been picked up by the police for loitering in the hotel lobby and was told to get off the premises immediately.

Rachael found herself with Robert Taylor, almost in the nude, and “Mother wasn’t home.” She had no choice but to “go through with it.” Apparently the evening was a success because she became one of Taylor’s frequent dates when he was in New York. It wasn’t until three years later that he saw her picture in the paper for attempted blackmail. One of the detectives told a reporter who some of her vicitims had been or, in Taylor’scase, “almost was.” And though the papers did not print the entire story, it got around.
Taylor ignored it and denied it ever happened, but there were those who knew the truth and jokingly said, “He must have been pretty good in the sack for Rachael to go back for more and not try to hustle a few bucks. She was a real pro . . . ”

One of Taylor’s favorite leading ladies—on and off the screen—was Eleanor Parker. They were to make three good movies together, and the first was Above and Beyond, the story of Colonel Tibbets, who pressed the trigger that fired the atom bomb over Hiroshima in 1945.
This story had been sought by several film companies in Hollywood for five years following the war, but an absolute refusal met their efforts. Finally it was indicated in Washington that if Beirne Lay, Jr., co-author of Twelve O’ Clock High and himself a former B-29 pilot, submitted an acceptable treatment, the project might be considered. Lay wanted to write the “story behind the story” as seen through the eyes of the wife of a man charged with one of the most grueling responsibilities of the war.
Taylor was given the part of Colonel Tibbets in Above and Beyond and his performance was the closest he came to being considered Oscar material. The critics gave him the benefit and said he might have achieved it at another time. His type of acting wasn’t appreciated then, despite his perfection in a role that was made for him.

Eleanor Parker, who portrayed Mrs. Tibbets, was an established actress who had been nominated for an Oscar as best actress in 1951 for her talent in Detective Story.
When she met Taylor in 1952, she was in the process of separating from her second husband, producer Bert Friedlob.
She and Taylor were seen lunching together occasionally in New York while on a promotion tour for Above and Beyond. Their “friendship,” the press said, was “mutual admiration and professional devotion.”
She told reporters she would very much liketo do another picture with Bob, but to set them straight, that her relationship with him was platonic, she took out pictures of her three children and mentioned her husband.

The fact that Eleanor and Bob were seeing each other privately was a well-known fact at MGM and to their close friends, but their closeness was never revealed to the public.
They might have married, but Eleanor was in many ways like Barbara Stanwyck, and she was eleven years younger than Bob. Friends said it was difficult to put into words exactly why Eleanor and Bob did not reach the altar, but the general consensus was that she was an independent woman, a little flighty and somewhat domineering—all the elements Bob had faced in his first marriage.
His only comment was, “She makes me nervous.”
Nevertheless, they were in love and their acting together was always close to perfection. One MGM official said, “There was no doubt that they were very much attracted to one another and it showed up on the screen vividly.”