回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Bob continued to see Eleanor as well as other women, but he always managed to carry on his affairs so that none were aware that any others existed.
The only mention of his involvement with anyone was with Barbara. They were seen together more often after their break-up than during their marriage. She was eager to reconcile, but he had to be sure and made every attempt possible. Although he could not rekindle the sparks, he desperately wanted her friendship.
Taylor was a “first” in anther important phase of show business. In the early fifties the movie industry was taking a terrible beating from television. Film stars damned the little square box and for years refused to comment on it. Joan Crawford, for example, said that any movie star who appeared on television was unfaithful to Hollywood.
But Robert Taylor appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in what the newspapers said “was an unprecedented move.”

“The first time a major Hollywood film studio is allowing one of its contract stars to appear on television will take place on Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town show on CBS-TV when Robert Taylor makes a guest appearance along with film clips of his latest movie, Above and Beyond.
“With a giant studio such as MGM finally granting permission for a top-name star to do a video show, the opening may finally have effect whereby a flood of other contract players, not only form MGM, but from other studios, will now pour into the medium.
“Up until now Hollywood held to the steadfast rule not to let any name personality under contract take part on a live TV show.
“The engagement of Taylor for the Sullivan Show, according to a Vice-President of MGM, is regarded as an experiment to see the value of television in the promotion of pictures.” (Note: MGM was the last major studio to release their feature films in full for public showing on television.)

“Taylor’s appearance also points up the growing cooperation between Hollywood and television. MGM breaking down might make it easier for every studio to leap into TV with name personalities they have at their command.”
The film clips of Above and Beyond shown on the Ed Sullivan Show added to its promotion very effectively. Taylor as Colonel Tibbets assisted Air Force recruiting and publicized the movie in key cities throughout the United States.
Taylor was awarded with fine review: “A good, strong performance is registered by Robert Taylor. To the best of our recollection, it’s the finest acting he has ever done.
“Equally splendid is Eleanor Parker’s portrayal of Lucey Tibbets. She lives the role before your eyes!
“A surpassing film; all should see it!”

Because of the nature of Above and Beyond, Taylor went out of his way to promote it. He hated public appearances and MGM rarely forced him to “go on the road.” It was he who volunteered for his rare appearances.
Actually at this time in his life, he had little to do in Hollywood because he had no real home.
He was still hanging his clothes at Ruth’s and sleeping in the maid’s little room on occasion, but he preferred to keep moving.
On one trip, he drove to Texas to buy a couple of horses. Helen Ferguson, whom Bob still kept on his payroll as press agent because she was Barbara’s friend, called him and asked what his schedule was. He had made out his timetable and read it to Helen as if he were giving someone a detailed account of an auto race: time he was leaving Los Angeles, where and what time he would stop to eat, where and what time he would spend the night, the exact time he would be checking out the horse and the hour of his return back home.
Helen said, “I wish just once you’d break one of your iron-clad schedules!”
The minute he returned he picked up the phone and called her. “Well I busted the schedule. Got back two hours early.”

Taylor bought his horses and boarded them in the country. When he wasn’t going over a script or preparing for a movie, he was checking over his plane or grooming his horses.
He looked for a house or preferably a ranch, though he did not know exactly what he wanted to do at this time; but like everything else he undertook, he did not overlook anything.
He had been shown a small ranch in the valley and was considering buying it. Just to be sure, he looked it over. One morning after a quarrel with Ruth, he decided to have a place of his own, but he wanted to make sure how much it would cost to re-do the kitchen and carpet the floors, among other things. The real-estate agent had given him the measurements of the rooms, but he took his own tape-rule and got down on his hands and knees, carefully jotting down everything to the 1/100 of an inch.

As Taylor went about his measuring, another couple entered the door to inspect the ranch.They assumed he was the renting agent and carried on quite a conversation with him, only seeing his rear view.
“God damn! I had to stay in that position. I was afraid they would recognize me. Then my pants split. I could feel it happening slowly and I tried to ease up a little without showing my face. Then it happened—the whole damn seam went.
“I sat up, face to the wall, and told them I was busy—to come back later. The woman was laughing and she said she would gladly sew my pants up.
“All I could think of was her finding out who I was and telling everyone what color undershorts Robert Taylor wore. I finally got rid of them when I said the floors weren’t level and I was bustin’ my pants trying to figure out how to rectify the situation.
“Never did buy the place, but I also decided I had a big ass! Told my tailor not to put in any more back pockets . .. ”
Such stories were related to friends, but never to reporters. Underneath his somber exterior, Taylor had an unusual sense of humor and could have made himself a more colorful person if he had opened up publicly.

Like Tracy, Gable and Rock Hudson, Taylor was not good at personality interviews. They talked about everything but themselves. In Taylor’s case he would get on the subject of hunting and fishing without realizing it. He found it almost impossible to talk about himself.
He has been called a bore; but actually it was he who was bored: Idle chatter bored him, party talk bored him, movie talk bored him. Sports and politics were his favorite subjects, and occasionally he liked to talk about actress he worked with, comparing their beauty and talent.
His fellow actors admired him for his promptness, professional abilities and his being just one of the boys.
During the temporary downfall of movies in the early fifties, MGM sent their efficiency experts around to the sets. Budgets had to be slashed. One of the first luxuries that was eliminated was free coffee for the cast and crew. The stars, however, were allowed to have as much as they wanted free of charge.

This announcement was a genuine shock to Taylor. It infuriated him! First of all, if everyone did not have the privilege of free coffee, he wouldn’t either. Secondly, he loved his coffee—gallons of it. Third, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t report for work if an adjustment wasn’t made. “The very idea of my being allowed free coffee while the less important people, as they are referred to, are not, burns my insides! They work harder than I do. It’s a God damn shame. No coffee, compliments of MGM , no leading man, compliments of Taylor!”
The next day everything was back to normal.Coffee was severed as usual. One of the cameramen said, “I really doubt if Taylor would ever not show up for work. He probably would have made some kind of deal whereby he would have had the coffee bill for everyone sent to him.There was no doubt that it was the principle involved, but he could never find it in his heart to hold up production for anything—even coffee.”

After Taylor’s divorce from Barbara he became more outgoing. He had to be. There were too many people who removed themselves from his list of friends when the divorce was announced because they sided with Barbara.
It was a good lesson, in a way, because he had to make a new life for himself, which meant going out of his way to show strangers he needed them as much as they wanted to know him.
Taylor met a young lady with money who was trying to make it in the movies. He liked her friends, who were a group of musicians, movie-extras, college students, nurse and doctors.
Janice was not romantically involved with Taylor. He knew her parents and they suggested he might enjoy some of her “off-beat” parties. She and her groups, they said, were outgoing and down-to-earth.

He had stayed pretty much to himself when he joined her and seemed to be getting a kick out of watching everyone laughingly engrossed in a game of charades at a rustic house at Malibu, decorated with posters and filled with large Oriental pillows scattered about on the floor.
Janice suggested Taylor meet everyone personally, but no one said more than, “How do you do?”
“Ya know, Jan, I don’t think your friends like me!”
“Of course they do, but you have to realize who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“Robert Taylor, big-time movie big-shot, silly! It’s hard for them to treat you like an equal!”
“God damn, why don’t they try?”
“God damn, yourself. Why don’t YOU try? YOU go over to them—start up a conversation . . . go on.”
He did, but a few minutes later he had disappeared. Janice called his house and Ruth said he was asleep.

What people did not know about Robert Taylor was that during all those years under all that Hollywood glamour, he was nursing a chronic inferiority complex. To him Gary Cooper and Clark Gable were big stars, while he was just Robert Taylor.
He could always see why a Mickey Rooney was so popular, but his own popularity was a mystery to him. He acted like the only man in the world who never heard of Robert Taylor.
After a brief guest appearance in I Love Melvin, Taylor agreed to make Ride Vaquero! It was a letdown, and one critic wrote amusingly, “Nothing could have been as static as the dusty shenanigans of such urban buckaroos as Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Howard Keel. In short , it rated not Tiffany’s window, but the old cat bin!”
Although Ava Gardner was now married to Frank Sinatra, she remained a friend to Bob.

All the Brothers Were Valiant with Stewart Granger and Ann Blyth was not one of Taylor’s favorite movies. But it was full of action and the mutiny scene at the end was exciting. Granger was not Taylor’s kind of guy—“Too stuffy!” Fortunately Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore were also in the cast of players and both were Bob’s pals.
In a letter to a friend he wrote, “Me? I ain’t been out with anyone, ain’t even seen anyone to go out with in a helluva long time. Gettin’ now so I don’t even miss ‘it.’ I’m just anxious to finish this friggin picture and get agoin’ somewhere.
“The studio sent two scripts for my perusal, but they both stunk and I turned them down. I naturally won’t until I get home whether or not they will accept my 'no' as final,but I'm hoping. In any case, unless I find something more to my liking and assuming they won't force me to do one of these, I’m still plannin’ on goin’ back to Paris as soon as they give me the ‘no retake’ sign.

“I love Paris—my favorite city in the world! So . . . I’ll probably stay there until something worthwhile comes up. I’d like to do another picture during the summer months so that I’ll be free for some huntin’ and fishin’ this fall, but it seldom works out that way. Maybe I’ll be lucky this year . . .”
Whatever scripts Taylor was referring to are unknown, but a very good guess would be Knights of the Round Table, another costume epic.
MGM was still determined to make Taylor American’s Knight in Shining Armor. Schary cleverly to took up where Mayer left off.
Taylor “accepted” Knight of the Round Table: “One of the good things about this picture was my starring with Ava again. When I was told to do Ivanhoe much against my wishes, it wasn’t as boring as I had expected, I had Elizabeth Taylor in that one, and when I knew she was going to be my leading lady I kinda hoped this time I might get ‘somewhere’ with her. She was in full bloom then, but to my disappointment she was head over heels in love with Michael Wilding, and if it hadn’t been for that, I would have tried my luck with her.”

Once again Taylor gave in to the studio and went to England to film Knights of the Round Table, in which he played a trim, military Lancelot. Before he left he asked for some steaks to be sent to him from New York. He was very particular about how they were cooked and explained to the chef in his European hotel exactly how he wanted them broiled.
Apparently the chef overcooked them and when they were served, Taylor was furious. One of his friends said, I’ve never seen Bob so mad! He actually couldn’t talk. He just stared at the meat and didn’t even have to cut into one of them to know they were ruined.
“Everyone dug into theirs, but he just satand fumed. He got up and stormed out of the room slamming the door—and I mean slammed the door! He wouldn’t come back until the table had been cleared off and refused to mention the incident again. The chef stayed out of his way, too.
“A few days later Bob was invited to dinner and he snapped, ‘A good party is only as good as the food—otherwise, it’s nothin!’”

On may 23, 1951, twenty-seven-year-old Ursula Schmidt-Hut Thiess arrived in the United States from Germany.
She was born in Hamburg, the only child of an importer. During the years of World WarⅡ her home was bombed, her father lost his business and she was forced into farm-labor. She lived in unheated barracks, worked long hours and too often faced starvation.
After brief training as an actress with a repertory company, she married actor-producer George Thiess. It was an unfortunate wartime union, but she bore him two children—first a daughter, Manuela, then a son, Micheal.
In 1947 she divorced Thiess and appeared in Little Theatre productions, modeled for photographers, wrote stories for motion picture short subjects earning on an average of ＄35 a month.