Was there a luckier film star than Robert Taylor? No overwhelming passion to be an actor, or even famous, or show off - he just sorted of ambled along through life, growing up in Nebraska, going to college in California. He was a good looking guy, so they cast him in college plays, where he was spotted by MGM because he was a good looking guy. Then the studio signed him and cast him in some things, because he was a good looking guy, and his parts got bigger and he became a star very quickly. And despite basically getting all this way because he was good looking he stayed a star for 25 years.
Okay that's not entirely fair - he knew he was lucky, and worked very very hard, kept his head down, was conscientious and never phoned it in. He listened to his directors and found the perfect studio home in MGM, where he was happy for Leo B. Mayer to boss him around - and later on he got along well with Dore Schary. He had a good speaking voice, the benefit of a star marriage to the elder Barbara Stanwyck, and was comfortable co-starring against the big female names of the time (this is harder than it sounds - and also helped Fred MacMurray become a name).
His career was managed well - pretty boy leading man parts in the mid 30s, tales of cocky kids who get redemption a la Tom Cruise in the late 30s, Westerns and war flicks in the 40s, film noir in the late 40s, costume blockbusters and Westerns in the 1950s (where he received an unexpected boost as a swashbuckling star). Stardom eventually faded but the decline was gradual - lesser budgets, a TV series, Disney, European thrillers. He died while still being highly employable.
There's a lot of genuinely good films on Taylor's resume: Camille, A Yank at Oxford, The Crowd Roars, Waterloo Bridge, The Bribe, Undercurrent, Bataan, Quo Vadis, Rio Valdez. To be frank, all these parts could have been played better by other stars at the time - he was from the Golden Age but remained a second rate star. (His 50s swashbuckers especially all seemed as though they should have had Stewart Granger in them instead.) Still, the length and bredth of his career demands serious appraisal and Tranberg does a good job. There is solid research and plenty of sympathy.
Taylor comes out of it well - a solid, decent stick, if a bit dull; an old school Republican, which meant he was a dick during the McCarthy era, where he named names, but he also served his country during the war; he enjoyed hunting, fishing and flying, disliked hippies, became Ronald Reagan's best friend towards the end of his life; he enjoyed a happy second marriage to a woman who wanted to stay at home and raise kids (if not her kids to a first marriage - one of whom killed himself shortly before Taylor's death of smoking-induced cancer). Definitely worth a read, especially if you're a fan of golden era Hollywood.
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