Robert Taylor: Barbara Stanwyck's one true love

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in "Remember the Night" (1940) directed by Mitchell Leisen

“It’s one of those quirky twists of fate that a film as exceptional as 'Remember the Night' has been so overlooked when it comes to great Christmas movies,” TCM host Robert Osborne was quoted as saying. “It’s our hope at TCM that our special Christmas Eve showing of this holiday gem, now fully remastered, will help give it a much-deserved new life.” "Remember the Night" marked the first of four on-screen pairings of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. (the other three are: Double Indemnity, The Moonlighter, and There’s Always Tomorrow.) In the film, MacMurray plays a prosecutor who falls in love with a shoplifter (Stanwyck) during a court recess at Christmas time." Source: www.altfg.com

From the get-go, Barbara presented something of a sense of unease in Robert Taylor. She was his paradox. She could present that 'pal' sort of persona, but he wasn't sure she was going to be one to share his more masculine interests. She was attractive, though not extraordinarily feminine, a trait important to him. Taylor resented having to feel subservience in relation to his mother's domineering will, and that translated into his relationship with Barbara. History has repeatedly shown that Bob was decidedly heterosexual. Every interview conducted with people who had attempted to 'out' him in print boiled down to a rumor. Harry Hay was one of the most deliberate propagators of these rumors. Considered an early leader of the gay rights movement in America, as well as a closeted-gay member of the Communist Party of America, Hay was asked directly if he had proof of Bob's homosexuality. He sheepishly admitted he did not have an iota of corroboration. He acknowledged that there was nothing but gossip involved; none of the of-repeated fantasy was based on fact.

Bob and Barbara's relationship was not one of convenience. The attraction was real. Bob wanted that 'pal', that woman who would be with him whenever he needed a companion; he also wanted a woman to look to him as her provider and protector. Though Barbara wasn't traditionally seen that way, at her core she was an emotionally helpless creature in many ways. Hunting and fishing and flying trips were Bob's way of asserting his place as the head of their family.

Joel McCrea and Sam Goldwyn had a meeting and conversation turned to who would play the lead in Stella Dallas. McCrea suggested Barbara. "She's just got no sex appeal!", Sam Goldwyn blurted. "Well, you better not let Bob Taylor know that." McCrea laughed uproariously. "He's nuts about her, and he thinks she has sex appeal." That got Barbara a screen test. She hated to do them, but wanted this part so much she relented. Stella was rough, out of shape, a bleached blonde with a vulgar sex appeal. She was the sort of woman Barbara might have become if she hadn't found a place in Hollywood. Bob accompanied her to a Hollywood preview of the film on July 23, 1937. Sam Goldwyn had hired police officers to protect the stars in attendance.

Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor at the premiere of "Stella Dallas"

Bob's usual restraint was lost when he saw Barbara helpless and pinned in the arms of a burly cop. He glared at the policeman, struggling against those holding him back as he bellowed, "I'll punch you in the jaw!" Headlines the next day screamed, "Taylor Rescues Barbara Stanwyck From Officer!" Taylor was monogamous by nature. If he made a permanent choice, he'd be out of circulation. The specter of Bob's parent perfect marriage still stood in front of him.

Once Barbara had a party and 'allowed' Bob to invite his cronies. John Wayne was there and said Barbara retired early. "We were just a bunch of guys telling tall tales about the big fish we didn't catch and the bears that got too close to our tents, when she appeared in a nightgown at the top of the stair and yelled, 'Get up here to bed where you belong!' I can't repeat what else she said but it had to do with sex and what she wanted him to do. I might have told her where a wife belonged and how she should act, but I knew she would take it out on Bob. I felt very bad for him."

"Barbara was tomboyish, yet used sex like a loaded gun." Bob was a blatant sex symbol in his public life, and though he had a proclivity to be very sexually active in his private life, his attentions weren't always toward his wife anymore. Many of Bob's extramarital romances could be traced to his film credits.

Lana Turner said blatantly that Bob was exactly the sort of guy that attracter her. "I wasn't in love with Bob," Lana stated. Bob was determined, though. Whether he thought he was really in love, or the lust factor overtook all logical thought, Bob was ready to leave Barbara for Lana Turner. Common belief indicated that they did have a hot-and-heavy physical relationship. Stanwyck was riding the crest as an actress, but losing a grip on the man she loved. Taylor took the title role in "Johnny Eager", a gangster who destroys himself for his love of a girl. Taylor said to his best friend Tom Purvis, that he and Lana were 'bursting' with passion during production, but they did nothing about it until they finished filming. "I had to have her if only for one night." Bob's confessed love for Lana Turner and asking her for a divorce nearly killed Barbara.

About his performance in "Waterloo Bridge", Taylor would say: "It was the first time I really gave a performance that met the often unattainable standards I was always setting for myself."

Lia DiLeo was young, busty, long-legged, and she hardly spoke a word of English. She secured a part in "Quo Vadis", nothing more than a blip across the screen. She and Bob never appeared together onscreen but were seen as a couple nearly everywhere else in town. "There were hundreds of girls. I don't know why he picked me. He was very nice, a gentleman. He wasn't really a talker, just a few words... 'hello', 'goodbye', 'I love you.' He certainly was very macho, a very great, good lover. He wanted a divorce [from Barbara], I understand." He'd take her to dinner at the finer restaurants, and they usually went dancing afterward. Barbara arrived while filming was in progress.

Barbara stayed with her husband for six weeks. Once she left Italy, Bob was again back to his old ways, even seen frequenting a Roman whorehouse. Barbara dealt her last card in this scenario. She did not want a divorce; she wanted to keep hold of Bob forever. Once he had finished filming and was back in Los Angeles, their inevitable face-to-face happened. She gave Bob an ultimatum to behave in public, or she would meet him in court. He took her up on the divorce, and that turned out to be a challenge Barbara lived to regret, later calling her hasty move 'the biggest mistake of my life." She carried a torch for Taylor until the day she died. Robert Taylor was the one true love of her life, and she went to her grave avowing that love.

Sources: "Reluctant Witness: Robert Taylor, Hollywood, and Communism" (2008) by Linda Alexander and "The Life and Loves of Barbara Stanwyck" (2009) by Jane Ellen Wayne

Happy 33rd birthday, Jake Gyllenhaal!

Jake Gyllenhaal talks about his role in the film "Prisoners" (2013) at Charlie Rose's show

Happy 33rd Birthday, Jake Gyllenhaal!

Robert Taylor & Lana Turner: Electric Chemistry in Johnny Eager

“If this were serious drama one might complain that what makes Johnny Eager tick remains a mystery, that lovely students of sociology aren’t apt to embark on discussion with a parolee on Cyrano de Bergerac’s apostrophe to a kiss. But as pure melodrama Johnny Eager moves at a turbulent tempo. Mr. Taylor and Miss Turner strike sparks in their distraught love affair. Van Heflin provides a sardonic portrait of Johnny’s Boswell, full of long words and fancy quotations.” -Theodore Strauss, New York Times (1942)









Johnny Eager (1941) directed by Mervyn LeRoy - Full Movie -

Lisbeth, tortured by guilt over her "murderous" act, is on the edge of a nervous breakdown when Johnny finally comes to see her, and when he realizes what she's prepared to sacrifice because she loves him, something finally clicks inside of him. He confesses to her that the murder was a fake -- the gun was loaded with blanks, she didn't kill anyone, the man she shot is fine and walking around as if nothing happened. But she thinks he's just trying to ease her conscience, so he sets out to prove it to her.

Despite the hurried feeling of the last ten minutes or so, this is a well-crafted story with some very nice plot touches along the way. There is a recurring motif with an honest cop, Badge No. 711, who is troublesome to Johnny's gambling rackets. Lisbeth's reference to Cyrano early on in the film serves as a kind of thematic backdrop -- just as Cyrano denied his love to spare Roxanne, Johnny pushes Lisbeth away because he knows he's no good for her. Performances are all top-notch, from the leads on down to Connie Gilchrist and Robin Raymond in one brief scene as Johnny's aunt and young cousin. The only weak link might be Robert Sterling as the hapless cuckolded fiancé, but his role doesn't give him much to do but stand around and look like a martyr.

Lana Turner is breathtaking to look at, and her acting ability never fails to catch me off-guard. Robert Taylor is a commanding presence as Johnny and Edward Arnold does his typical rich-white-conservative guy -- if you've seen him in any other movie, you've probably seen him play the same role. But it's Van Heflin who marches off with the acting honors (and the Academy statuette) as the tortured, philosophical lush.

Director Mervyn LeRoy draws on his experience with gritty crime dramas such as Little Caesar and I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, and infuses it with typical MGM gloss. It's a cleaner, less dangerous-looking underworld, but what it loses in violent realism, it makes up for in an intellectual bent that Warner Bros. couldn't match. Source: www.milkplus.blogspot.com

Robert Taylor: Lana Turner and Robert Taylor starred together in “Johnny Eager” (1941) and Cheryl Crane (Lana's daughter) said their chemistry was electric: “these two beautiful people got carried away during the filming.” This was one of the few times Lana ever got involved with a co-star, Crane said. However, Taylor was married to Barbara Stanwyck at this time so Lana tried to resist, but they “fell into a heavy flirtation.” Stanwyck heard about it and headed down to the set to tell Lana hands off. Taylor told Lana he was going to leave Stanwyck for her and Lana backed off completely after that, Crane said. Source: cometooverhollywood.com

R.I.P. Audrey Totter

Audrey Totter, the blond starlet who made her mark in such 1940s film noir classics as Lady in the Lake, The Set-Up and High Wall, has died. She was 95.

Totter, who had a stroke and suffered from congestive heart failure, died Thursday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center, her daughter Mea told the Los Angeles Times. A former radio actress in Chicago and New York who signed a contract with MGM for $300 a week in 1944, Totter had a career in films that was short-lived but memorable.

Her breakthrough came in Lady in the Lake (1947), where she starred as a publishing executive who hires private detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) to find the wife of her boss. (The film, also directed by Montgomery, is notable in that it is shot almost entirely from the viewpoint of the main character, Marlowe.)

In The Unsuspected (1947), Totter was the gold-digging niece of murderous radio-mystery host Claude Rains;

starred as Robert Taylor's psychiatrist helping him prove he didn't murder his wife in High Wall (1947); and played the wife of over-the-hill boxer Robert Ryan in Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949).

"I remember the first time you told me that you were one punch away from the title shot," her character says in The Set-Up. "Don't you see, Bill, you'll always be just one punch away!" She also reteamed with Montgomery for the Broadway-based drama The Saxon Charm (1948),

two-timed milquetoast drugstore manager Richard Baseheart in Tension (1949), and played Ray Milland's loose accomplice in the Faustian tale Alias Nick Beal (1949). A native of Joliet, Ill., Totter had voice roles in Bewitched (1945), starring Phyllis Thaxter, and Ziegfeld Follies (1945) before she lured John Garfield away from Lana Turner (but only briefly) in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Scenes from "Personal Property" (1937) starring Jean Harlow & Robert Taylor

Some scenes from "Personal Property" (1937), starring Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor, directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Based on H.M. Harwood's 1930 Broadway play 'Man in Possession' and already filmed by MGM in 1931 as 'The Man in Possession', 'Personal Property' stands as Jean Harlow's last completed film effort and unfortunately one of her less popular starring vehicles with modern audiences.

Harlow had already played all the parts that made the legend, she's firmly entrenched at the top of the heap of the star pantheon by the time of 'Personal Property', while Taylor held the title of being the hottest male sex symbol under MGM's employ. Fresh off leads opposite Crawford in 'The Gorgeous Hussy' and Garbo in 'Camille' he was naturally teamed with Harlow for what would have likely been the first of many such pairings had not Harlow tragically died just a couple of months after the release of 'Personal Property'.

Both Harlow and Taylor have had their talents overshadowed by their sex appeal and basically either of their names on the bill would have had many customers panting on the way to their seats.

Harlow doesn't help Taylor's case when she calls William Powell to mind by flashing the famed star sapphire ring that he gave her throughout the picture. And this is all just too bad for Taylor, forever damned as the pretty boy whose work remains solid through the decades despite his handsome features. As Crystal climbs the stairs in a huff Jenkins notes, "She's a bit stuffy, you know," to which Raymond mutters back "She's glorious." "What?" declares Jenkins. "Eh, she's furious," replies Raymond catching himself. Source: immortalephemera.com

-Crystal Wetherby (Jean Harlow): And while we're asking so many questions, why were you sent to jail?

-Raymond Dabney (Robert Taylor): Murder.

-Crystal Wetherby (Jean Harlow): I wish it had been suicide!

Prior to beginning production on this film in January of 1937, Bob and Harlow worked together on a Lux Radio Theatre production of “Madame Sans-Gene” (a comedy which takes place in postrevolution France).

Bob enjoyed working with Jean who he described as “full of laughs, yet her fun never seemed to interfere with her work.”

Assigned to direct once again was speed demon Woody Van Dyke. This time he really did do a rush job in getting the picture completed in approximately two weeks.

Like most of his co-stars, Bob liked and was protective of Harlow, who was known to most people on the MGM lot by her nickname “Baby.” Taylor later recalled Harlow as “warm, outgoing, [and] deeply kind.”

In October of 1940 the first peacetime draft was enacted in response to the war in Europe. Bob was given his draft number. “Robert Taylor may be a heart throb to millions of American girls,” wrote United Press, “but to the draft board he is simply No. 363.” The article added, “However, the board has to take into consideration the fact that he’s a married man.” Among the other actors given their conscription numbers were: Henry Fonda (#132), Tony Martin (#374), Cesar Romero (#1811), Ray Milland (#2658) and John Payne (#3511). -"Robert Taylor: A Biography" (2010) by Charles Tranberg

In a Jan. 27, 1937, article, the Los Angeles Times reported: Jealously guarding ten gallons of California water and an atomizer, Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor left Pasadena yesterday on the Santa Fe’s Chief, bound for Washington D.C., and President Roosevelt’s birthday ball Saturday. The water is for the purpose of shampooing Miss Harlow’s honey-blond hair, which she will not trust to hard eastern waters. The atomizer is for the use of Taylor, just recovering from a cold. Five months later, Harlow, during the filming of “Saratoga,” died at only 26. The Times obituary reported that Harlow had been ill during the February stop in Chicago.

As Senator Robert Rice Reynolds posed on the steps of the Capitol with Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor on January 29, 1937, photographers asked him to kiss the platinum blonde beauty. At first, Reynolds was shy and hesitant, prompting Harlow to remark: "The trouble with this gentleman is that he doesn't seem to want to go through with it." With that, the manly Reynolds, undisturbed by the presence of the great screen lover Robert Taylor, planted a resounding kiss on Harlow's lips, using what he later referred to as "Hollywood technique". It was a kiss seen around the country, and Life magazine featured a full-page photo of the embrace. -"Buncombe Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Rice Reynolds" (2009) by Julian M. Pleasants