回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

He said it was impossible to save any money on straight salary and he was anxious to make enough money to retire. When asked how it felt to be able to pick his own pictures for the first time in his acting career, he remarked, “That remains to be seen. I’ve picked a few before. What I have done is establish a price--＄200,000 per picture and a percentage of the gross. I’ll make two or three pictures a year and the money, because of the percentage, will be spread over a long peiod of time.
“Maybe I’ll have something to show for my life . . .”

Chapter Ⅻ
Taylor’s first attempt at making independent films was The Hangman at Paramount. Showing no emotion, he said it was a disaster. “I haven’t seen it and have no intention of seeing it. In fact, I haven’t seen any of my last three pictures. And come to think of it, I haven’t been to a Hollywood premiere in ten years.
“Why the hell should I? Who wants to see me?”
The press did not agree with Taylor’s opinion of The Hangman: “One of Robert Taylor’s chief assets has always been his quality of conviction. He contributes a great deal of this to his role asthe hangman.”
Again Taylor proved his flair for comedy when he was accidentally handcuffed to Tina Louise and mounted a horse with her in pursuit of a killer.
Taylor chose The Hangman not only because it was a Western, but the character of Marshall MacKenzie Bovard was the type of role he preferred—a tough, determined, mean and ruthless man who was always on the side of law and order.

The office is now setting up my own Corporation—Robert Taylor Productions—and everything I do from now on, either as a motion picture or in TV, will be done thru the corporation. I’ll be under contract to my own corporation and will be paid for it.
Last week I flew down to Missouri and came home with a helluva new Pointerdog for pheasant and quail. He is really a dandy, but I took him out to my Vet to be thoroughly checked over and they discovered that he had just about every type of worm known to the canine world.
They’ve just wormed him and the poor bastard is so “pooped” out that I wouldn’t run him on pheasant if I never shot again. We plan on building a six-dog kennel at the new place.
Sorry that ya went and “split your girdle,” Curley—but I have a hunch it was fun gettin’ thataway. I have to stay away from that kind of silage or I’d never get a job. Get me up again’ those nuts and I’m a gonner—no willpower atall!
Love to Vi and the deductions.
As ever, Dilly

Taylor wanted to turn it into a working farm so that it would pay for its own upkeep. When the vegetable vendor came around, Bob would trade his eggs for vegetable peels for the chickens.
According to his rule, he installed an outdoor barbeque and loved to cook steaks, knowing within seconds when they were done. “Never gash a steak!” he’d scream and slap your hand.
Ursula managed the household, did her own marketing and was in the children’s school car-pool. Bob did the shopping for groceries often, but was usually on the phone from the market with Ursula trying to figure out her writing. “When Ursula uses a pencil, her handwriting is a combination of German, English, RKO, and mishmosh. Even our checks bounce because the people at the bank think she’s a counterfeiter!”

He was a happy guy now. MGM had held back a great deal of Bob’s salary and what was left over was given to him over a period of time. He continued to pay Barbara 15 percent of his yearly income and supported Manuela and Michael Theiss, thogh the two children were not satisfied with Robert Taylor as a stepfather. He was unusually strict and old fashioned when it came to bringing up children, and although he tried not to interfere with Ursula’s two children, their behavior irritated him.
Manuela and Michael managed to get themselves in trouble for various offenses involving the police, and the headlines always read: ROBERT TAYLOR’S STEPSON or DAYGHTER ARRESTED. Except for his name appearing in the papers with unfavorable publicity, Taylor remained in the background and let Ursula handle the situation. He paid their fines, bails, school tuition, hospitals and living expenses.
Taylor was obligated to do MGM’s The House of Seven Hawks under his three-year option clause. He kept his mouth shut about this picture, obviously discontented with the results. However, the critics once again disagreed with him, and said that he was always competent in his role of a romantic adventurer. “The picture’s one distinction is that Robert Taylor, with a minimum of material, is still showing his successors how a dull job can be well done!”

Joe Hyams asked Taylor what he thought had kept him on top: “Damned if I know,” he said. “I’ve been wondering myself for years. I guess the important thing is to get a good picture once in awhile.
“Acting is the easiest job in the world, and I’m the luckiest guy. All I have to do is be at the studio on time, and know my lines. The wardrobe department tells me what to wear, the assistant director tells me where to go, the director tells me what to do. What could be easier?”
Hyams concluded his artilcle by saying, “The best summation of Taylor’s character came from an old farmer in Utah who talked with him for hours while on location recently. Asked what he thought of the star, the old timer replied simply, ‘That’s one man who never growed himself an ego!’” (Joe Hyams, New York Herala Tribune, April 8, 1957 ) .

On one subject Taylor was adamant, and that was his privacy. No one other than friends was permitted on his property or inside his home.
Despite the peals of the MGM publicity department, he never allowed photos taken of his son, Terry. Unless an interview was very informal, he refused publicity involving his personal life, and when the pressure was put on him he said, “The public should not be entitled to anything I do not feel they should have. I’m aware of the necessity of publicity, but I don’t go out and look for it. Too much of it is worse than none at all. I should know!”
“I want my son to grow up normally and not think there is anything different or special about his father.
“Besides, when I go home at night I want my life as an actor to end . . .”

Taylor had bought a section of land in Nebraska near his hometown of Beatrice, planning to make this his country home, but Ursula, who lived through endless winters in Germany without heat, had a phobia about cold weather.
Instead they settled for Buffalo, Wyoming.Their cabin there was Taylor’s favorite hunting and fishing retreat. Except for a modern, well-equipped kitchen, the place was decorated in Hune wood and comfortable furnishings. Water was supplied by a mountain stream which also provided a series of ponds, and from the front door of the cabin, Bob had only 15 feet to walk and catch all the mountain trout he wanted.
In keeping with the rustic atmosphere he wanted the "plumbing" away from the house . . .
One of his favorite activities was to camp out for a week at Slide Lake in Teeton National Park near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to fish for cutthroat trout.

He liked to invite Tom Purvis to go along, “now that you have that custom-made sleeping bag,” and Purvis said, “Sometimes the temperatures would go below zero. It never bothered Taylor, but my blood was thinning out in Florida and I damn near froze—regardless of the sleeping bag that Dilly thought would lure me to go along with him.
“He’d get me up to go elk hunting at 3:00 in the morning. I’d drag my 240 pounds outta that thing just about the time I was warmin’ up. One day around dawn we were stalkin’ elk and out of the mist stood one big as an elephant—seemed to me.
“Bob and I froze—and it wasn’t the weather. Neither of us said a word. Finally that big wild thing turned around and disappeared. ‘Why the hell didn’t you shoot, Dilly?’
“Bob was a little shaken, but he covered it up by saying, ‘ I wasn’t worried about us, Curly. I was wonderin’ what would happen to that poor elk if he charged a moose like you!’”
However, the relaxation of the wilds with his hunting buddied was put aside for awhile. Taylor was doing a pilot film for his television series, and was scheduled to leave for Africa to make Killers of Kilimanjaro.

Taylor commented that it was impossible to fool the public: “I don’t care what you say—they can spot cheap sets, casting and all the typical money-saving gimmicks. Try to cut corners and you wind up in the cellar with a seven-point rating. No, if we’re going to do a series, it’s got to be first-rate or I don’t play ball. I’ve got too much at stake to begin with, but I’m betting we’ll have a winner.”
When he was asked why he didn’t yield to television before, Taylor explained he was under exclusive contract to MGM and too busy making movies. But when he found himself on his own he turned to TV as the next logical step. “Besides,” he said, “my picture price was ＄300,000 and nobody wanted me! A guy can’t live on a weekly pension of ＄865.”
As Police Captain Matt Holbrook, Taylor portrayed a mature, dedicated and friendly law-enforcement officer. Holbrook was a believable character and Taylor needed only to be himself in the role.
He had no illusions whatsoever of contributing anything “aritistic” to television and emphasized the fact that he didn’t like the television medium. In fact, he didn’t even enjoy watching it. He made it clear he was doing it for money, and when the series was through, he would never do another. It was too time-consuming, and he had no time off to go hunting and fishing.

The Detectives premiered in September,1959, but Robert Taylor didn’t see it. “I don’t own a television set!”
A month later Hy Gardner invited Bob to lunch. He took Mrs. Gardner along, and when she met Taylor she looked at her husband and asked, “Why is it that columnists age faster than movie actors?”
Hy asked Taylor if he felt any older than when they were together twenty years ago.
“Nooooo, not unless I see myself in those old TV movies, which is why I don’t watch them.”
“How came you succumbed to The Detectives?”
“Hy, it’s as simple as A B C—a five-letter word pronounced M-O-N-E-Y. If you get the right vehicle, TV is a harmless and lucrative racket. You don’t have to worry about rehearsals because there are none. If the series catches on, the segments can run forever and you can sit back and deposit residuals without ever having to look at yourself on the screen.”
“Bob, who do you think was the greatest actor on the MGM payroll when Leo the Lion did the loudest roaring in Hollywood? Gable?”
“No.”
“Tracy?”
“No.”

“You?”
“Helllll, no! The greatest actor at MGM was Louis B. Mayer. He could play all the parts, male leads, leading ladies, ingénues, everything but Rin Tin Tin. They don’t make ‘em like Uncle Lousie any more.”
“Joe Hyams said your life was so normal you even bore youself. Haven’t you gotten into any public controversy?”
“When I appeared before the House Committee on un-American Activities investigating communism in Hollywood in 1947. My beef was that I was prodded into doing a movie that I thought was pro-commie—a thing called Song of Russia. I think it’s making the rounds of television again. I must remind myself to miss it!” (Hy Gardner, New York Herald Tribune, October 13,1959.)
It wasn’t long after The Detectives appeared on TV that Taylor gave in and bought a set. He claimed it was for his family’s pleasure rather than for his own amusement.
Though his show was a success, Taylor’s biggest thrill was his new baby daughter, Tessa, born on August 16, 1959. He called her “Puss Puss,” and nicknamed himself “Ol’ Dad.”

Taylor devoted his entire time to his television series and did not film a movie for over a year. He worked close to the ranch and was able to come home at night like any other normal working man.
He admitted he liked doing movies much more than television. When a friend of his from Beatrice asked him to help someone get into show business, he pointed out that the motion picture business in Hollywood was in bad trouble because it was cheaper to make movies in Europe. Taylor could not encourage anyone to get into “this dilemma” because television was the “breeding ground” and even in this medium it was “dog eat dog.” He advised the young eager chap from his hometown to choose another career, adding, “Trying to get into the movies today is the same thing as diggin’ your own grave . . .”
The Detectives ran its course on ABC-TV for two years. In its third year NBC-TV expanded the series from a half hour to an hour and called it Robert Taylor’s Detectives. In a letter to Purvis, Bob wrote about his situation at work and at home.

There was a good deal of publicity about Taylor’s new role as the straightforward cop who is too busy with crime to get involved romantically and how the public had accepted him as just that. Having Ursula take the part of a police reporter was a strong indication that he was not going to change the concept of this image.
The press at times denounced Taylor for his outlook and said he had changed too much and it might be wise for him to give in to a little hand-holding. One reporter who observed him working on the set wrote that Taylor was like an old lady and wanted everything just so.
The entire article about Taylor was uncomplimentary and one of the writers on the show, Cal Clements, said, “When Bob came in the morning after he had apparently read it I told him I thought it was a damn shame and the others agreed. Bob said he was used to it and to forget it.”
Someone else remarked, “Adversity is a challenge to Taylor.”

Robert Taylor’s Detectives faded from the television screen at the end of the 1961-62 season. The show was doing well, but it is not unusual for a good series to be cancelled. Taylor was dietressed because of the loss of a steady income, but he said doing a weekly one-hour show was tiring.
“Hell, half the time I was workin’ in places like the railroad yards where it’s 100 degrees in the shade. Talk about ‘lather’ enough to bathe one buffalo? God damn, the meringue you could have scraped offa me woulda shampooed a whole herd! If I was back in the Navy they’d prescribe salt pills. However, I doubt that I could lift one. If I could find some of that old-fashioned remedy they used to call HADICOL it might have perked me up a shade!”
He did not have time for a vacation and little opportunity to go hunting or fishing. NBC asked him to do another television series with Robert Loggia based on the filed articles of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to be aired on Thursdays from 7:30 to 8:30. He accepted, but a conflict arose between the producers of the show and the Government, and the series was cancelled.
Taylor said, “Everything in the world that COULD go wrong HAS gone wrong!