Rod Taylor

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Rodney Sturt Taylor (11 January 1930 – 7 January 2015) was an Australian-born actor.

He appeared in more than 50 feature films, including The Time Machine (1960), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1965), and The Hell with Heroes (1968).

Early life

Taylor was born in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, and Mona Taylor, a writer of more than a hundred short stories and children's books, was born on January 11th, 1930. Captain Charles Sturt, a British explorer of the Australian outback in the 19th century, is his middle name.

Taylor attended Parramatta High School and later studied at the East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College, where he also took art classes. His mother wanted him to be an artist, so he was coerced into taking the art classes. He worked as a commercial artist for a time. After seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic touring performance of Richard III, he decided to become an actor.

Personal life

Peggy Williams, a model who lived in Peggy Williams (1951-1954), was his first wife. Since reports of domestic assault, they divorced. Taylor later claimed that they divorced because they were too young to have a happy marriage. Taylor dated and was briefly engaged to Swedish actress Anita Ekberg in the early 1960s. In the late 1960s, Pat Sheehan dated model Pat Sheehan.

Mary Hilem (1963-1969) was his second marriage. The couple had one daughter, Felicia Taylor, a now-retired CNN financial reporter (born 1964). In 1967, Taylor bought a house in Palm Springs, California.

In 1980, he married Carol Kikumura, his third wife. They appeared on his television show Hong Kong in the early 1960s when she first appeared on his television show Hong Kong. In 1971, the couple met for the first time in nine years before marrying.

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Career

Taylor gained extensive radio and stage experience in Australia, where his radio work included a period on Blue Hills and a stint as Tarzan. He had to support himself by working at Mark Foy's department store in Sydney, designing and painting the windows, and other displays during the day. In 1951, he appeared in a replay of Charles Sturt's voyage down the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers, as Sturt's offsider George Macleay. Inland with Sturt (1951), a short documentary, was based on it. Taylor has appeared in a number of theatre productions for Australia's Mercury Theatre.

Taylor made his debut in the Australian Lee Robinson film King of the Coral Sea (1954), portraying an American. In Sydney, Long John Silver (1954), an unofficial sequel to Treasure Island, he played Israel Hands in an unofficial film shot. Taylor was given the 1954 Rola Show Australian Radio Actor of the Year Award, which included a ticket to London via Los Angeles, but Taylor did not go to London.

Taylor soon found roles in television shows such as Studio 57 and the film Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) and Giant (1956). In 1955, he appeared as Clancy in the third episode ("The Argonauts") of the first hour-long Western television series, Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker. Taylor and Edward Andrews were gold seekers who have been planning to win it all, only to see Native Americans blow their gold dust to the wind. The episode was a recreation of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Taylor was considered to be one of Warner Bros. television's Maverick's leads.

After James Dean's death, Taylor unsuccessfully screen tested to play boxer Rocky Graziano in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Somebody Likes Me, but the studio was impressed enough to give him a long-term deal. He appeared in The Catered Affair (1956), Raintree County (1957), and Ask Any Girl (1959), a MGM employee. He was instrumental in Separate Tables (1958), which gained Oscar awards for two of its stars, David Niven and Wendy Hiller. In an episode of The Twilight Zone titled "And When the Sky Was Opened" (1959), he made a good impression guest-starring.

Taylor's first leading role in a film was in The Time Machine (1960), George Pal's version of the science-fiction masterpiece by H. G. Wells, with Taylor as the time traveller and thousands of years in the future. Taylor portrayed a character not like that of his Twilight Zone episode a year ago and the film World Without End in 1956.

In or about 1960, he was approached about the role of James Bond in the first full length Bond film. According to reports, Taylor refused to participate because Bond "beneath him." "Every time a new Bond picture became a smash hit," Taylor said. "I tore out my hair," the girl says.

Taylor starred in the ABC dramatic series Hong Kong in the 1960-1961 television season. Lloyd Bochner was his principal co-star, while Jack Kruschen portrayed Tully, the bartender. On Wednesday evenings, the program faced stiff competition from NBC's Wagon Train, and it only lasted for one season. In Disney's animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), he appeared in Pongo (a Dalmatian dog) and also appeared on Marilyn Maxwell's short-lived ABC series Bus Stop around the same time. Shannon's Way, an extension of A. J. Cronin's novel Shannon's Way, appeared in an episode of NBC's The Ordeal of Dr. Shannon" in 1962.

Taylor appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's horror thriller The Birds (1963) with Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, and Veronica Cartwright, portraying a man whose town and home were attacked by menacing birds. Taylor appeared in Jane Fonda's romantic comedy in New York on Sunday (also 1963).

Taylor worked mainly for MGM during the mid-1960s. Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Maggie Smith co-starred in The V.I.P. (1963), his first feature film role as an Australian; Fate Is the Hunter (1964) with Jill St. John and Maggie Smith; The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) with Jill Smith, 1964; Do Not Disturb (1964) with Julia Christie and Maggie Smith; The Golden Eagle (1964) with James Garner; The Visitor (1964) with Richard Burton, 1964) with Elizabeth Taylor;

He began to change his image as an Australian in Chuka (1967), which he also directed; Nobody Runs Forever (1968), where Taylor appeared as Travis McGee, and it was darker than Amber (1970) as Travis McGee.

He was also up for the role of martial artist Roper in Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973). Robert Clouse, who had also directed Taylor in the film Darker than Amber (1970), was the film's producer. Taylor was rumored to be too tall for the role, and the role was instead given to John Saxon.

Taylor appeared in The Train Robbers with longtime buddy John Wayne and Ann-Margret in 1973. The film was a box office hit. Taylor also appeared on television: he appeared in Bearcats! (1971) on CBS and in The Oregon Trail (1976) on NBC. He appeared on the short-lived spy drama Masquerade (1983) and was one of the main characters in the similarly short-lived series Outlaws (1986). Taylor appeared on CBS drama series Falcon Crest from 1988 to 1990, playing opposite Jane Wyman. He appeared in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and Walker, Texas Ranger, in the mid-1990s.

Time Machine: The Journey Back in 1993, he hosted the documentary Time Machine: The Journey Back in 1993. David Duncan, the George Pal film's screenwriter, wrote a mini-sequel for the special. Taylor resurrects his role as George, reuniteing him with Filby (Alan Young).

Taylor returned to Australia many times over the years to make films, including playing a 1920s traveling showman in The Picture Show Man (1977) and a professional killer in On the Run (1983). He played the foul-mouthed redneck Daddy-O in the black comedy Welcome to Woop Woop (1997).

Taylor had gone into semi-retirement by the late 1990s. He appeared in the horror film "Kowl" in 2007, which revisits the possibility of marauding birds turning on their human tormentors. The source of the disturbance, however, was discovered by Taylor, who plays the town doctor. Winston Churchill was depicted in a cameo in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds in 2009. In 2017, a documentary about Taylor's life, "Pulling No Punches," was released and accepted into the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

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