Rod Taylor, Mr. Versatility
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Akzidenz_Grotesk — 11 years ago(January 10, 2015 09:12 AM)
I think he had a bad agent or a run of bad luck- This post from another thread on this board nails it:
Re: Why did he not have a bigger career?
image for user Bogmeister
by
Bogmeister
Fri Oct 3 2014 15:12:13 Flag
IMDb member since July 2005
I think it was mostly bad luck - he hit a bad patch in the late sixties with his films: it began with The Liquidator (66), which should have been at least a modest hit as a James Bond parody, but it was delayed due to legal problems and failed. Chuka (67) had poor distribution. Dark of the Sun (68) is a fan favorite now but back then it had poor reviews (too violent) and bad box office. No one went to see The Hell With Heroes or The High Commissioner, even though they're decent films. It got worse as the seventies began - Darker Than Amber and The Man Who Had Power Over Women were virtually unseen. Rod briefly switched to TV at this point (Bearcats) but this series was cancelled fast and his films after it in the mid-seventies were again almost unseen and even worse, nearly unreleased and even now barely seen. The nadir was Jamaican Pie (79) - unreleased and then direct-to-video a couple of years later under another title; Rod didn't even know this until he spotted it in a video store. It boils down to money & box office. Either the film choices were poor, had bad luck in get1908ting around to theaters or Rod was considered out of style by some point. It's probably a combo of all these.
"Man was meant to grow, not stop!" -Robert Browning -
hobnob53 — 11 years ago(January 10, 2015 12:30 PM)
I learned a lot by reading a biography of the actor called "Rod Taylor: An Aussie in Hollywood". The author admires Taylor but pulls no punches in describing his negative sides. It seems much of the blame for his career failing to develop lay with Taylor himself.
He made some bad film choices, taking some he shouldn't have and turning down others that might have helped his career. In the late 60s he decided to concentrate on action roles and refused offers for straight dramatic parts that would have allowed him to demonstrate his versatility more. He also wouldn't listen to good career advice from his agent and others. Fancying himself a top star at the time, he refused parts in major films (as with John Wayne) that may have been second leads but were successful.
And as with every other actor, he simply wasn't picked for some roles he would have liked, such as
Planet of the Apes
.
Not all the blame for the downturn in his career after the 60s attaches to Rod, and of course no one can know if making different choices would have made him a bigger star, but apparently he had a large part in making the bad decisions that harmed his career and cost him top stardomas he himself admitted years later, philosophically and with few regrets.
PS: I've taken the liberty of correcting the typo in the thread title. His name was
Rod
Taylor, not "Rold"! -
hobnob53 — 11 years ago(January 12, 2015 06:29 PM)
True, but by then it was kind of late. He had offers to star with Wayne years earlier and for various reasons declined. One I recall was
Circus World
, not a good picture, but still another chance to star with Wayne, which may have led to better things.
You're right that he kind of let himself go in the late 60s and early 70s. He was drinking heavily then and not behaving nicely. Apparently most of his friends and co-workers had only nice things to say about him except those who knew or worked with him during what the author of his bio calls his "dark period", roughly 1967-1973. -
Bogmeister — 11 years ago(January 13, 2015 01:36 AM)
Referencing the bio by Vagg again, Rod actually signed up to co-star in
Circus World
(64) with his buddy John Wayne but quit on the day before shooting was to begin. Rod didn't like his reduced role in the latest script version and saw only chaos on the set as they were making ready to start, so he didn't see any upcoming positive changes. Maybe this is where the poor choices began for Rod. Wayne thought the role would help Rod's career. The film did flop (Rod's replacement was a relatively unknown actor from TV with the memorable name of John Smith). It's interesting to speculate on these past films and how they might have been. Maybe the film would have been a hit with Rod co-starring with Wayne, but we'll never know. It did seal the coffin on Samuel Bronston's film empire and it's tantalizing to think that Rod's decision may have had a big impact on how film history went. -
hobnob53 — 11 years ago(January 13, 2015 09:31 PM)
Right about Rod's withdrawal from the film. (Believe it or not the original director was to have been Frank Capra, who also objected to the massive script rewrites and left.) John Smith (not his real name) had been in films as well as TV for a decade (he played the newlywed in Wayne's
The High and the Mighty
) but was hardly a "name" except on motel registration books.
But I very much doubt Rod's presence would have changed anything about that film's fortunes. He wasn't a real box-office name quite yet and if Wayne's name couldn't draw crowds Rod's certainly couldn't. The movie was just bad. As to Bronston, his studio was already bankrupt and on its way out even as
Circus World
was being filmed. He had been losing millions not only through overextension and weak box office returns but because he had no financial controls and money was loose and unaccounted for. His previous film,
The Fall of the Roman Empire
, cost $21 million, a huge, almost unequaled amount at that time, and had made just $1.5 million in theaters.
CW
was the last gasp but even if it had been a hit it would have been far too little, too late. But no one could have salvaged that film. In it or not, Rod had no impact on the fate of Bronston Productions.
But I can think of so many movies where Rod would have been better than the actor in it that I'm sorry he didn't get offers for some films, or accept some of the ones he turned down. That includes
Circus World
, even though the film would have bombed no matter what. -
Forlorn_Rage — 10 years ago(January 11, 2016 01:55 PM)
To be fair, a lot of careers that flourished in the 50's and early 60's went south in the late 60's. Filmmaking and the studio system was changing a lot and many got lost in the transition. Even if his career could've been better in the late 60's and 70's, he had so many great roles and movies in a short span, throughout the 60's, that it more than makes up for it, IMO.
Can you list some roles that were offered to him that he turned down so that I might get a better idea on how he personally may have sabotaged his own career? -
cvalance — 10 years ago(January 11, 2016 06:14 PM)
Even in Rod's heyday in the 1960s, he never carried a film that was a big box office hit. He was mostly the second lead to a bona fide star like a John Wayne, a Glenn Ford, a Doris Day, even a James Garner. I wish he'd appeared in more dramas on the order of a Young Cassidy.
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hobnob53 — 10 years ago(January 12, 2016 10:28 PM)
Here are a few films Taylor either tried for and lost, turned down, or was considered for but didn't get:
Somebody Up There Likes Me
(1956): The lead, as Rocky Graziano (which went to Paul Newman).
Rio Bravo
(1959): As "Colorado", the part played by Ricky Nelson.
Ben-Hur
(1959): As Massala, later played by Stephen Boyd.
Dr. No
(1962): As James Bond (Sean Connery got it, of course).
Circus World
(1964): Already mentioned.
Enter the Dragon
(1973): The role that went to John Saxon.
I've read of others but these are some that come to mind. I'll see if I can find other examples.
Rod made some bad decisions, taking films that didn't turn out so well (such as
The Liquidator
, among others), and made a big mistake in the late 60s when he told his agent he would only accept action roles, which severely limited him and did him a big injustice, since he was a splendid dramatic actor as well as a good light leading man in comedies. He even failed to properly follow up on his success in
The Time Machine
by rejecting Hollywood projects in favor of going to Italy to star in a silly sword-and-sandal epic,
Colossus and the Amazon Queen
, because his girlfriend, Anita Ekberg, had gone to Rome to star in
La Dolce Vita
and he wanted to be with her. (The pair got engaged but broke it off after Rod returned to Hollywood, though they remained friends. Curiously, Anita died on January 11, 2015, four days after Rod and on what would have been Rod's 85th birthday.)