回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Private Number opened at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Across the street a couple stood looking up at the marquee.
It was the first time he had received top billing and the first time he had seen his name in lights: ROBERT TAYLOR—LORETTA YOUNG. (“I was terribly impressed!”)
Barbara remarked quietly but firmly, “Don’t let it go to your head, buster. Loretta has been working for years to get her name up there. You’ve only been at it a short time. The trick is to keep it up there!”
Taylor said that was the best advice he ever had.
This time MGM reversed its outlook and decided to exploit Taylor’s close relationship with a woman.They invited Barbara to co-star with Bob in His Brother’s Wife. It was obvious to everyone on the set that their love scenes were sincere. Every day they lunched together in her dressing room and he never let her start the day without a basket of flowers.

The critics were favorable. His Brother’s Wife was good and the romantic lines spoken well, but Taylor was not accepted in his role: “We are either bold enough or cowardly enough to admit that words are of no weight against the enormous popularity of Mr. Taylor. However we have reservations about the star’s personification of a lab scientist. He is just not the type to be exposed to heat, fever-bearing ticks an Metro’s special effects!”
Mayer said, “Seems to me, Bob, you are just too pretty to be a doctor, too handsome to be a brain surgeon and too delicate to trudge through the jungle and certainly too sweet to be bitten by bugs.
“Keep up the good work!”
Next he assigned “his son ” to do The Gorgeous Hussy with Joan Crawford, Barbara’s closest friend. (The press asked whether the title role was played by Crawford or Taylor.)
Taylor said, “Miss Crawford has driving ambitions unlike any actress I have ever known.”
Of him she remarked, “Robert Taylor will always remain one of the beautiful people in my life.”
They were all close socially also. Miss Crawford was married to Franchot Tone at the timeand Saturday nights were devoted to cozy gatherings of the happy foursome.

Bob and Barbara were accepted everywhere as a very close couple, belonging exclusivelyto each other, but at that time they never discussed marriage or even becoming engaged, for that matter.
Love was excluded from any interviews, Barbara protecting Bob for the sake of MGM and he respecting her position with Frank Fay whom she had yet to divorce. They were seen together often; then suddenly he would appear at a party without her and she somewhere else without him. Sometimes they dated others and the press admitted they were confused.
But the Queen and her Prince remained silent.
Ed Sullivan gave it a go: “You’re from Nebraska,Bob?”
“Yes, and someday when I get my hands on enough money I want to go back to the farm.”
“And take Barbara with you?”
“We’re not planning marriage, Ed. That’s all I can tell you. Just between you and me,she’s the grandest person I ever met. She has helped me an awful lot, believe you me. I’ve always liked the girls, but I wish some of them wouldn’t make saps of themselves—or of me! ”
“Getting back to Barbara . . . do you think she’d like Nebraska?”
“Don’t know, Ed. Why don’t you ask her?”

Taylor never did taken Barbara Stanwyck to Nebraska. Whether she would have wanted to is unknown, but from all indications, he was not about to at this time.
He had enough instinct even then to know she would not have fitted in. She had always been a city girl and was bored with country living. Small-town folks had little in common with her and vice versa.
She could have easily insulted someone without realizing it. Her outlook was straightforward, and she let it be known. Barbara’s vocabulary would also be a problem in the Midwest. Her adjectives were explosive and few could be found in the dictionary.
Although she was careful with Ruth, the two women clashed from the beginning. Both weredomineering and possessive, and Bob was in the middle. They told him what to do and how to do it, but in different ways.

If Ruth liked blue sweaters on Bob, Barbara didn’t . . . so he tried to avoid blue.Ruth liked her son to use her handmade quilts on his bed; Barbara thought blankets were more masculine. So he used both.
Ruth took advantage of her position as Robert Taylor’s mother and gave out interviews atwill. She was quoted as saying her son had no intention of getting married until he was well over thirty years old. Further, she made it clear that thoughher son was not living with her, she was quite content in her little house at 1063 Selby Street; Arly called her every day and often spent the night with her.
Despite the influence that Ruth and Barbara had on Taylor, L. B. Mayer was still the ultimate boss of his career. He had promised “his son” great things and now he was preparing to keep his pledge.
He called Bob into his office and said, “How’s your wardrobe, son?”
“Well, I have a couple suits.”
Mayer sent him to the best tailor in Hollywood and had him back in his office to inspect them. “Maybe you can’t act very well, Bob, but at least you can dress decently.”
Taylor also got his first dinner jacket, white tie and tails and even a top hat. The first time he wore the formal clothes was to an Academy Award dinner. He wasn’t invited but slipped in when the guards weren’t looking.
He said, “I just stood there and watched the stars come in and as I watched, my mouth hung open further and further until you could have stuffed an Oscar in it!”

Actually,Mayer had more in mind than making Taylor look like a star. He was casting for one of his greatest films—a classic in the film industry—Camille. Greta Garbo had accepted the lead, playing the Lady of the Camillias, but the part of her lover, Armand, had not been filled. They were looking for an actor who was young, innocent and immensely attractive.There were numerous conferences in Mayer’s office to discuss Camille and who would support Garbo as Armand.
IrvingThalberg suggested Taylor,but the others were opposed. They felt he was too inexperienced to match the quality of Garbo. Thalberg disagreed and pointed out that he was not looking for a superb actor for the romantic role of Armand but rather an established star who was extremely handsome and “peppy”—which Taylor was—and who could portray great love for Garbo, which Taylor could. Thalberg got his choice and Mayer had kept his promise.
Taylor was scared to death!
The Lady of the Camillias was the vehicle that would allow him to reign even stronger on the MGM throne, temporarily take Gable’s crown away and conquer not only the heart of a nation, but the world as well.

The year was still 1936 when George Cukor, who was to direct Camille, introduced Grata Gusafsson from Sweden to Spangler Arilngton Brugh from Nebraska, U. S.A.
“How do you do?” she said without raising her eyes.
Not another word was said and after a painful moment of silence, Bob, slightly embarrassed, walked away in a sweat. He had been prepared for the Garbo treatment, but when he got it, he was hurt.
“She never spoke another word to me after our introduction, except on camera. I gave up trying to guess what was wrong when one day suddenly she started talking to me; then slowly, as Marguerite(Camille) warmed up to Armand in the script, Garbo’s attitude toward me off the set changed completely.
“By the time Marguerite fell in love with Armand, Garbo was as friendly and delightful as anyone could possibly be.
“I realized that out of the range of the camera Garbo lived her part just as intently as she did when she was ‘on’
“During the last part of the picture we used to talk for hours, sometimes on the set, sometimes in her dressing room. Between takes once she looked down and saw asmall ant hill near her chair. For the next half hour the two of us discussed ant hills in particular and ant life in general.”
Garbo never allowed anyone other than the crew on the set when she was filming. Her reason—“It destroys the illusion.”

She could spot an outsider even if he were disguised as one of the extras or crew. She would stop a scene and point to the intruder: “Out!” It was an uncanny sense she had.
She didn’t believe in giving her autograph. When she became ill during the filming of Camille, several people in the cast sent flowers. Her reply cards simply said. “Thanks.”No signature.
Taylor said the other members of the MGM “Stalbe”—Crawford, Harlow, Gable, Garland, Shearer, the Barry-mores, Rooney—were all pals. No jealousy existed between the male stars and none between the female notables.
Only Garbo was aloof. She would arrive alone in her chauffeured Packard, do her work on the set, then leave alone in her chauffeured Packard.
Everyone was impressed.
Even though, as Taylor said, she warmed up to him during the filming of Camille, he was extremely on edge. During rehearsals he paced the floor. He had bee told to show up regardless if he was on camera that day or not.

On one of these days he sat watching Garbo and became so tense over a scene he was going to do with her the following day, he wandered off the set onto another soundstage.
He spotted Gladys George, who was doing Marie Antoinette, and she noticed his nervousness. “Relax, Bob. C’mon, let’s have some fun. Why don’t you sneak onour set as an extra?”
He put ona costume and white wig an mingled in with the others ready for the scene to be shot.
The director, Woody Van Dyke, spent almost an hour setting things up, telling everyone where to stand, etc. Finally he shouted, “All extras remain in place. As for you Taylor,get off this set!”
Taylor, stunned and blushing, was amazedthat he had been discovered among 200 extras.
“Jerk,” said Van Dyke, “gentlemen of Marie Antoinette’s court did not wear black and white buckskin sports shoes with crepe rubber soles. Wear shoes of the period next time you want to play, little boy!”
Taylor left the studio and stopped offto see Ruth. He told her he was tied of everything. MGM should have known better than to have put him in the same movie with Garbo.
“During the first love scene we slipped off the divan and fell on the floor. Can you imagine? She was laughing and I was stumbling all over myself trying to help her up.”

The next day he faced the camera again and this time Garbo’s dress caught on fire. Smoke emerged everywhere.
Taylor pushed her away, got a bucket of water and poured it on the actress.
There was silence.
Knowing Garbo’s temperament, the stage crew waited for lighting to strike. Instead she calmly asked if they could conclude shooting for the day since it would take hours to re-do her hair and prepare another dress.
Taylor said he didn’t know what to do when he saw her on fire and followed his first instinct. He was doing a bad job with his role and everyone felt sorry for him.
Barbara tried to calm him down. She said it took guts to play Armand under any circumstances.
He complained that he wasn’t allowed in the sun because Garbo wore little make-up and he had to be very pale. He loved the sun an was always in it, playing tennis, falling asleep or swimming, but during Camille he had to give up any exposure to elements.

For the first and last time in his career, his nose, which was slightly pointed to the left, was cosmetically straightened with putty. He hated it , saying he felt like Pinnochio. “The one thing I dislike most about this business is having to take ‘womanish care’ of myself! ”
There-takes of Camille went on and on . . . Garbo continued doing the unexpected. She startled Bob when on one occasion she was supposed to kiss him once, but instead kissed him all over his face. She was the aggressor in her love scenes—reaching first, but never touching—just pretending she might.
In alater scene, while Taylor was kissing her, she giggled. Cukor told her politely that she was supposed to show anger, not mirth.
She laughed. “I try to get angry, but he does not give me a chance.”
Taylor never knew if she was laughing at him or just diverted for the moment . . .

But the worst was when he almost dropped Garbo during the final death scene. (“I don’t know why I was so frightened of her because her acting was as natural as her breathing. She thought with her eyes—they expressed exactly what was needed. Iconsidered work with her my greatest acting lesson, but I confess it didn’t teach me anything because what she had was inborn—not method.”)
When the picture was finished, they never spoke to each other again!
Alexander Dumas, author of Camille, based his novel on the life of Albhonsine du Phesis,a girl with a dresdin china figure and long enameled eyes like a Japanese woman. He created the impression also that she wore scentless camellias because she could not endure the odor of flowers. He wrote the book to pay his debts and called it a “potboiler.” Yet it set the pace for his career and had an extraordinary influence on modern literature.
Garbo was nominated for an Oscar, but did not win.
Robert Taylor was re-elected the King of Romance, love-making and Hollywood.

Men were more positive than ever that he was Pretty Boy and women more positive than ever that he was the man of their dreams.
But one of the best-kept secrets during the filming of Camille was Robert Taylor’s date with Miss Garbo. It was not for publicity and Bob did not mention it until many years later—which was typical of him. He frustrated his friends by confiding something, yet never giving details and often not finishing what he had started out to tell.
One evening when her name was brought up he casually said to a close buddy, “Yeah,I will always remember the one and only date I had with Greta Garbo. When I arrived at her house there she sat, all dressed up, in the middle of the floor, her long full skirt surrounding her as if she were posing for a picture. When I walked in she made no attempt to get up and though she was aware I was there because her eyes acknowledged my presence, she remained in that position until she had finished meditating.”
But you could get nothing more out of Taylor about that evening. Twenty years later he saw her in the MGM commissary and when someone asked why he didn’t go over and say “Hello,” he replied, “I respect her privacy and would never approach her. Besides, she probably wouldn’t remember me anyway . . .”

There views of Camille were superb. Frank Nugent of The New York Time wrote: “. . .Camille is Garbo’s best performance. Robert Taylor is surprisingly good as Armand, a bit on the juvenile side at times, perhaps, but certainly not guilty of the traditional sin of the many Armands of the past—callowness.”
Other critics acclaimed the movie also—“You could hear a few tear drops in the Capital Theatre during the exquisite pathetic scene when Camille dies in the arms of her lover. Robert Taylor plays Armand with considerable reserve and modestly steps away from the center of the stage, allowing Miss Garbo to bask in the full glory of the limelight.”
Taylor was said to have been wholesome in his role; his final visit to the dying Marguerite (Camille) was hailed with balcony cheers precisely like those that greet the arrival of the United States Cavalry to the settlers besieged by the Indians, except they were uttered by ecstatic females instead of small boys. This, it was said, was a spontaneous tribute to Taylor.

One newsman said he didn’t know why so many people spoke ill of the handsome Robert Taylor: “He seemed all right to me.”
Their kissing was highly praised: one reporter called it “pretty hot stuff,” and there were times the audience thought the screen lovers were going to bite each other.
A famous hairdresser in New York obtained a photo of Garbo’s hair-do in Camille and had an artist do a sketch of her three feet high showing off the Camille coiffeur. To make it look even more authentic, the head of Robert Taylor wearing his costume was placed below the sketch of Garbo. The hairdresser anticipated a rush of Garbo’s fans. He was sure to do big business with the ladies who were so greatly influenced by Garboin her performance. They came to his salon, all right, but not because of Garbo’s fuzzy, long rope-like curls, but because of Taylor’s sleek pompadour.
Taylor hated it all, but MGM would make millions!