Robert Taylor (American actor)
Robert Taylor (born Spangler Arlington Brugh; August 5, 1911 – June 8, 1969) was an American film and television actor and singer who was one of the most popular leading men of cinema.
For the Australian actor, see Robert Taylor (Australian actor). For other people with the same name, see Robert Taylor.
Robert Taylor
Taylor began his career in films in 1934 when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He won his first leading role the following year in Magnificent Obsession. His popularity increased during the late 1930s and 1940s with appearances in Camille (1936), A Yank at Oxford (1938), Waterloo Bridge (1940), and Bataan (1943). During World War II, he served in the United States Naval Air Forces, where he worked as a flight instructor and appeared in instructional films. From 1959 to 1962, he starred in the television series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. In 1966, he assumed hosting duties from his friend Ronald Reagan on the series Death Valley Days.
Taylor was married to actress Barbara Stanwyck from 1939 to 1952. He married actress Ursula Thiess in 1954, and they had two children. A chain smoker, Taylor died of lung cancer at the age of 57.
Early life[edit]
Taylor was born Spangler Arlington Brugh on August 5, 1911, in Filley, Nebraska, the only child of Ruth Adaline (née Stanhope) and Spangler Andrew Brugh, a farmer turned doctor.[1][2] During his early life, the family moved several times, living in Muskogee, Oklahoma; Kirksville, Missouri; and Fremont, Nebraska. By September 1917, the Brughs had moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, where they remained for 16 years.[3]
As a teenager, Taylor was a track and field star and played the cello in his high school orchestra. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska.[4] While at Doane, he took cello lessons from Professor Herbert E. Gray, whom he admired and idolized. After Professor Gray announced he was accepting a new position at Pomona College in Claremont, California, Taylor moved to California and enrolled at Pomona.[5] He joined the campus theater company and was eventually spotted by an MGM talent scout in 1932 after a production of Journey's End.
Personal life[edit]
Marriages and children[edit]
After dating her for three years, Taylor married Barbara Stanwyck on May 14, 1939, in San Diego, California. Zeppo Marx's wife, Marion, was Stanwyck's matron of honor. Stanwyck's surrogate father—he was her sister Millie's husband—and personal assistant, vaudevillian Buck Mack, was Taylor's best man.[14] Stanwyck divorced Taylor in February 1951.[15] During the marriage, Stanwyck's adopted son from her previous marriage to Frank Fay, Anthony "Tony" Dion, lived with them. After the divorce, Stanwyck retained custody of the child.
Taylor met German actress Ursula Thiess in 1952. They married in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on May 23, 1954.[16] They had two children, a son, Terrance, (1955) and a daughter, Tessa, (1959). Taylor was stepfather to Thiess' two children from her previous marriage, Manuela and Michael Thiess.[17][18] On May 26, 1969, shortly before Taylor's death from lung cancer, Ursula Thiess found the body of her son, Michael, in a West Los Angeles motel room.[19] He died from a drug overdose. One month before his death, Michael had been released from a mental hospital. In 1964, he spent a year in a reformatory for attempting to poison his father with insecticide.[20][21]
Death[edit]
In October 1968, Taylor underwent surgery to remove a portion of his right lung after doctors suspected that he had contracted coccidioidomycosis (known as "valley fever"). During the surgery, doctors discovered that he had lung cancer.[37] Taylor, who had smoked three packs of cigarettes a day since he was a boy, quit smoking shortly before undergoing surgery. During the final months of his life, he was hospitalized seven times due to infections and complications related to the disease. He died of lung cancer on June 8, 1969, at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.[38][39]
Taylor's funeral was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. Long-time friend Ronald Reagan (who was then the governor of California) eulogized Taylor. Among the mourners were Robert Stack, Van Heflin, Eva Marie Saint, Walter Pidgeon, Keenan Wynn, Mickey Rooney, George Murphy, Audrey Totter and Taylor's former wife Barbara Stanwyck.[40]
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Robert Taylor has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street.[4]