The Sentimental Bloke: Remembering Rod Taylor

There won’t be a need to take notes during this exhaustive historical recap, but it was in the 1610s, early on during the reign of Elizabeth “The Virgin Queen’s” successor, King James I (the son of executed Mary Queen of Scots, ironically linking him with Elizabeth, whose own mother, Anne Boleyn, was likewise beheaded), that British colonies in North America started receiving deported British criminals. The number of convicts transported to North America as indentured servants remains unverified, although estimates range from 50,000 to as many as 120,000. Regardless, even a minimum figure might represent one quarter of all United Kingdom immigrants during the 18^th century.

The reluctant emigrants, most of them prisoners taken in battle from Scotland and Ireland, were originally transplanted in New England. The American Revolution brought the practice to an abrupt end – one can only wonder what influence individual “deportees” had on the rebellion against the United Kingdom – and the British government was forced to look elsewhere for its wretched refuse.

From the late 1700s to 1868, large numbers of convicts from Great Britain were sent to various Australian penal colonies. For more than 80 years, more than 165,000 criminals, 25,000 of whom were women, were shipped to Australia. A July 2007 article in the British tabloid Daily Mail claimed historical archives reveal that at least two million Australians are descended from convicts deported to Australia. Based on the 2011 census of Australia's population of 21.5 million, that would mean almost ten percent of the nation has a criminal past.

The harsh demands to exist in the unrelenting outback of Australia resulted in a peculiarly nationalistic breed of man revered as a bloke. The appellation “bloke,” possibly derived from the Celtic “ploc,” meaning “large, stubborn person,” was first used in 19^th century London slang as an everyday epithet for any man. (The 1970 Black Sabbath rock anthem “Iron Man” was originally titled “Iron Bloke.” When he first heard the song’s main guitar riff, the band’s frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, remarked it sounded “like a big iron bloke walking about.”)

“Bloke” became the exemplar of an independent masculine archetype singularly associated with Australia’s national identity. During World War I, one of the most popular Australian books was an anthology of poems by C.J. Dennis, one of the most successful poets in Australian history, titled Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915). It attained the status of a national treasure and remains the best-selling volume of Australian verse. It was adapted to stage, ballet, and album recordings, most famously as a 1918 silent film, “The Sentimental Bloke,” starring vaudevillian Arthur Tauchert. The movie is considered the greatest Australian silent movie.

 

Gilbert Emery and Arthur Tauchert costarred in "The Sentimental Bloke" (1915).

Australian historian Russell Ward described the “bloke” in The Australian Legend (1959) as “a practical man, rough and ready in his manners…He swears hard and consistently, gambles heavily and often, and drinks deeply on occasion…He is fiercely independent…above all he will stick to his mates through thick and thin, even if he thinks they may be wrong…He tends to be a rolling stone, highly suspect if he should chance to gather much moss.”

A more contemporary description of a “bloke” is limned in Richard Walsh’s 1985 essay “Australia Observed”: “The ultimate accolade in Australia is to be a ‘good bloke,’ meaning someone who is gregarious, hospitable, generous, warm hearted, and with a good sense of humor.”

The “bloke” has been personified in a string of Australian actors, from People magazine’s first Sexiest Man Alive in 1985, Mel Gibson (admittedly, Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, but his family moved to his grandmother’s native Australia, when he was 12), to 2008 Sexiest Man Alive, Hugh Jackman, to 2014 Sexiest Man Alive, Chris Hemsworth, with Paul Hogan, Sam Neill, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Eric Bana, Heath Ledger, Simon Baker, and Karl Urban (not to mention New Zealand-born country singer Keith Urban) in between

Without a doubt, one Australian-born actor who stood out as a fair dinkum bloke’s bloke, was Rod Taylor (above), who died at the age of 84 on January 7, 2015. Taylor was only the second Australian actor, after Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn, to become a major Hollywood performer. (Which reminds us, unlike Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, did Rod Taylor or Errol Flynn ever sing in a musical? We didn’t think so!) Although he never achieved top-level stardom, Taylor made more than 50 films, memorably “The Time Machine,” “The Birds,” and “Young Cassidy,” easily transitioning from Disney to Hitchcock to avant-garde to Tarantino.

Rodney Sturt Taylor was born in a suburb of Sidney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor, and Mona Taylor, a prolific short story writer and author of children’s books. The middle name Sturt honors Rod’s great-great grand uncle, Captain Charles Sturt, a famed 19^th century British explorer of the Australian interior.

As a young man, Taylor worked as a commercial artist. He told Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper in 1962, “I hit my highest peak when I got a job painting backdrops for fashion window displays.” After seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic Theatre touring production of William Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” Taylor decided to become an actor, performing in numerous radio dramas. “I did almost 20 different daytime shows a week,” he recalled in a 1967 interview, “hopping from studio to studio, playing every imaginable character.”

 

Rod Taylor played George Macleay in "The Sturt Expedition" (1951).

Taylor’s first screen appearance was in 1951’s “The Sturt Expedition,” a 16-minute short about the 1829 expedition into central Australia led by the actor’s previously mentioned great-great grand uncle. Taylor played fellow explorer George Macleay in the film produced for Australia’s Jubilee, celebrating 50 years since the commonwealth was founded in 1901 in independence from the United Kingdom.

Taylor made his feature film debut in 1954 in “King of the Coral Sea” (above), starring iconic Australian bloke Chips Rafferty (dubbed “the living symbol of the typical Australian”). That same year, Taylor had a supporting role in “Long John Silver,” an American-produced sequel to the popular 1950 Disney production “Treasure Island” filmed in Australia. Unrecognizable in a bushy wig and shaggy beard and wearing opaque contact lenses as a blind, maniacal castaway named Israel Hands, he hams it up in a shameless, over-the-top caricature matched only by the film’s star, Robert Newton, who became the “patron saint” of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The year 1954 continued to prove to be a good one for Rod Taylor when he won an award for his radio acting. The award included a ticket to London via Los Angeles, but Taylor opted to remain in LA. In 1955, after appearing in a variety of TV shows, he unsuccessfully screen-tested to play boxer Rocky Graziano in MGM’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (Paul Newman got the role, which was originally intended for the late James Dean), but his mastery of a Brooklyn dialect and his physical prowess impressed the studio enough to offer him a long-term contract.

Rod Taylor keeps an eye on a rival for fiancee
Elizabeth Taylor's affection in "Giant" (1956).

Billed as Rodney Taylor in “Giant” (1956), he played an upper-crust British diplomat engaged to socialite Elizabeth Taylor before rich Texas rancher Rock Hudson sweeps her off her feet. Years later, Rod recalled a life-changing conversation with the film’s director, George Steven, whose long, esteemed career included “Shane,” “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Taylor said, “I landed in Hollywood with a pretty smug attitude. A talk I had once with George Stevens…put me on the right trail. He told me to respect myself as an actor, even a bit one.”

Stevens warned him “never to be impressed by the wrong values, never to compromise if I felt I was right and to believe in what I do and be happy about it regardless of criticism.” Taylor reflected, “And I began to see the industry in a bigger perspective and I resolved to work my head off…Just the thought that such a famous director would take the time to help me at that time was overwhelming. And I’ll try to follow his advice until I die.”

Rod Taylor costarred with Elizabeth Taylor again in 1957’s “Raintree County, a Civil War era melodrama featuring Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, and Lee Marvin. The busy actor’s schedule included a memorable role in a particularly chilling episode of “The Twilight Zone” titled “And When the Sky Was Opened,” costarring Jim Hutton and Charles Aidman.

Taylor’s first leading role on the big screen was in 1960’s “The Time Machine” (above), produced and directed by George Pal, a pioneer in stop-motion animated puppetry. Taylor plays a fictionalized version of the author of the original 1895 science fiction classic, H.G. Wells, called “George” (as in Herbert George Wells) in the movie, who has actually built a nifty Victorian time machine that transports him to the year 802,701, when emotionless flower children called the Eloi are terrorized and enslaved by Yeti-like evolutionary throwbacks called Morlocks.

 

Yvette Mimieux considers putting flowers in her hair
in "The Time Machine" (1960), starring Rod Taylor.

At first, Taylor turned the part down. “Then George Pal called me,” he later recounted, “and said he wasn’t making a ‘science fiction’ picture. He was making an ‘H.G. Wells’ picture.” Taylor came to regard the imaginative filmmaker as “a genius. He was a lovely, warm-hearted man. I thought of him as a funny little elf. He was surrounded by tiny puppets and toys, which he brought to life in his movies.” According to Taylor, Pal confided in him, “I’ve never directed before. There are areas you can help me, and areas where I can be of help to you.” Taylor admitted, “It did give me the opportunity to work closely with the director, rather than just coming to work and going home.”

George Pal and Rod Taylor share a laugh on the set of "The Time Machine."

In a 2005 interview, Taylor fondly remembered, “George Pal lived in this fantasy land, and he had a wonderful imagination, as you can see on the screen. There was no computerization in those days, and it was all about the characters.”

Taylor and Pal intended to team up again, but disappointments and frustrations repeatedly prevented the filmmaker from reuniting Taylor and Yvette Mimieux in a sequel. In 1993, 13 years after the death of George Pal, Taylor hosted a 50-minute documentary, “Time Machine: The Journey Back,” which included a mini-sequel written by original screenwriter David Duncan, reuniting Taylor with Alan Young, who reprised his role as the time traveler’s cherished best friend, Filby. Young remembered, “It was so good working with Rod again. I think we felt the camaraderie there, and it was a…very touching little scene.”

In the original "The Time Machine" (1960), the friendship between
George and Filby (played by Alan Young, who would soon star in the
sitcom "Mr. Ed" and become the voice of Disney's Scrooge McDuck)
was a very moving theme throughout, and their final parting was
memorably bittersweet.

Taylor was offered a role in the 2002 remake of “The Time Machine,” starring fellow Aussie bloke Guy Pearce and directed by no one less than the great-grandson of author H.G. Wells, Simon Wells, but this time he meant it when he turned it down. He disliked the script for its lack of “character relationships.” Undaunted, the filmmakers placed a photograph of him from the original film in one scene. Taylor had the gracious humor to laugh about it, saying, “My career has come down to being a photo in the background.”

For the better part of the 1960s, Taylor worked mostly at MGM, where he was paired with such leading ladies as Jane Fonda, Suzanne Pleshette, Jill St. John, and Doris Day in light dramas and romantic comedies. Toward the end of the decade, he made a concerted effort to change his image with tough guy roles in “Chuka,” a grim western which stands out as the only film he also produced, “Dark of the Sun,” a violent action picture about mercenaries in the Republic of the Congo which reunited him with his “Time Machine” costar, Yvette Mimieux, and “Darker Than Amber,” which cast Taylor as mystery author John D. MacDonald’s “salvage consultant” Travis McGee.

Rod Taylor prepares to spare Victoria Vetri from capture
by marauding Arapaho in "Chuka" (1967).

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, Taylor starred in a number of TV series, including “Bearcats,” “The Oregon Trail,” “Masquerade,” and “Outlaws,” all lasting one season (or less) each. He was reportedly considered for the role of playboy gambler Roper in 1973’s “Enter the Dragon,” starring Bruce Lee, but was deemed too tall for the part, which went to John Saxon. From 1988 to 1990, he played Frank Agretti, the long-lost owner of the titular vineyard in the popular prime-time soap opera “Falcon Crest.”

The cast of "Outlaws" (which lasted only one season in 1986) included
Charles Napier, Chirstine Belford, Rod Taylor, Richard Roundtree,
(seated) Bill Lucking, and Patrick Houser.

Growing weary of roles he was offered, the 57-year-old actor reflected in 1987, "Pretending to still be the tough man of action isn't dignified for me anymore. There comes a time when you're over the hill, and there are plenty of great looking younger actors who can take your place." By the 1990s, Rod Taylor had become semi-retired.

We’d like to re-spool a select few of his most memorable films on the Moviehouse projector, showcasing performances that define him as the sentimental bloke.

As already alluded to, Rod Taylor is undoubtedly best known for his first starring role, as H.G. “George” Wells, in 1960’s “The Time Machine.” His performance is a rich mix of virility, tenderness, whimsy, and poignancy. “I didn’t attempt to think what Wells may have really been like,” Taylor said. “I played my version of what a magnificent guy he must have been. Why couldn’t he have been strong, romantic and athletic, as well as a brilliant scientist?...I think it was the ballsiness of Wells…combined with being highly intellectual, which sold the character.”

In 1961, Taylor was personally selected by Walt Disney to be the voice of Pongo, the canine patriarch in “101 Dalmatians” (above), which essentially started the trend of casting noted Hollywood actors to provide characters’ voices in animated features. “Walt was the sweetheart of all time,” Taylor told Starlog magazine. “I wish I had gotten to know him better.”

Tippi Hedren seeks comfort from Rod Taylor in "The Birds" (1963).

A couple years later, Alfred Hitchcock cast Taylor in the quintessential nature-gone-berserk picture, “The Birds.” Tippi Hedren (mother of actress Melanie Griffith and grandmother of “50 Shades of Grey” star Dakota Johnson) made her screen debut as the latest “Hitchcock blonde,” a wealthy socialite pursued by Taylor’s character, a charming lawyer and something of a mama’s boy.

The film featured Jessica Tandy (future Best Actress Oscar winner for “Driving Miss Daisy”) as the doting mother, Veronica Cartwright (one of the screen’s classic screamers: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Alien,” "The Witches of Eastwick") as Taylor’s kid sister, and Suzanne Pleshette as Taylor’s ex-girlfriend (she’s a dark-haired woman in a Hitchcock thriller, so you know she won’t make it to the last reel).

Taylor, who remembered himself as “a brash young brat,” said he got off on the wrong foot with the director by calling him “Alfred” instead of “Mr. Hitchcock.” When the actor expressed his interest in Hitchcock’s work, and they started talking about making movies, the two “just got on extremely well,” according to Taylor. “I was absolutely flattered and astonished that he wouldn’t mind working with the kid.”

One wouldn't guess from this lighthearted behind-the-scenes snapshot that
Alfred Hitchcock called Rod Taylor a "two-bit actor." Based loosely on a story
by Daphne du Maurier, the screenplay for "The Birds" was written by novelist
Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle), who, under the pen name Ed McBain,
wrote the best-selling 87th Precinct mysteries. Hunter grumbled, "I don't think
Hitchcock was fair to my script." As for the leading actors, a grumpy Hunter
described them as "one who can't act and the other who's so full of machismo
you expect him to have a steer thrown over his shoulder."

Tippi Hedren told People magazine, “Rod was a great pal to me and a real strength. We were very, very good friends. He was one of the most fun people I have ever met, thoughtful and classy, there was everything good in that man.”

Speaking of ornithophobia, in 2007, Rod Taylor had a cameo as a small-town doctor in the SyFy Channel “Original” film “Kaw,” a cheesy ripoff of "The Birds" about crazed ravens attacking humans.

Rod Taylor anxiously awaits his paycheck
for his guest appearance in "Kaw"  (2007).

If “The Time Machine” was Rod Taylor’s most popular film, “Young Cassidy” (1965) has been singled out in a number of reviews as his finest performance, portraying socialist playwright Sean O’Casey. Esteemed as the first Irish writer to dramatize the plight of the Dublin working class, O’Casey participated in the Irish Nationalist uprisings before the formation of the IRA and watched family members die and friends beaten and imprisoned. His plays criticized otherwise revered rebel heroes and sympathetically depicted prostitutes, until then a theatrical taboo.

“Young Cassidy,” based on O’Casey’s autobiography (O’Casey gave himself the name Cassidy in his third-person writing), covers a dozen years, from 1911, when the Irish were steadfastly protesting British rule, to O’Casey’s move to England in the 1920s, after his controversial play “The Plough and the Stars” incited riots and lost him many supporters. The playwright himself personally approved the script and the casting of Rod Taylor (after Sean Connery, Richard Harris, and Peter O’Toole were considered), although he died before the production was finished.

Leave it to Hollywood publicity to market a compassionate
intellectual the likes of Sean O'Casey as shirtless beefcake.
(O'Casey's daughter, Shivaun O'Casey, who would become
a renowned scenic designer, stage actress, and theater director
in her own right, had a small role in "Young Cassidy" as the
maid to Lady Gregory, a cofounder of Dublin's storied Abbey
Theatre and an early patron of Sean O'Casey, portrayed in
the film in a wry performance by Dame Edith Evans.)

John Ford, who had directed a screen version of O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars” in 1936, starring Barbara Stanwyck, was originally signed to direct “Young Cassidy” but fell ill two weeks into filming and was replaced by Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff.  While Cardiff was credited onscreen as the director, the first credit still announces, “A John Ford Film.”

During his brief tenure, Ford (who directed only one more picture, the negligible “7 Women,” in 1966) gave Taylor little direction; according to Scott Eyman, author of the John Ford biography Print the Legend, "Taylor was one of the authentic, two fisted types” (translate: bloke) whom Ford admired. Taylor remembered that Ford would say, “You know what the f*** you do in this situation. You love this girl. I don’t have to tell you anything. Let’s see a little bit of you.”

Johnny Cassidy (Rod Taylor) comforts his long-suffering mother
(Flora Robson) in "Young Cassidy" (1965).

In a lusty, passionate, and sensitive role, Taylor, as noted in Life magazine, “combines both the ruggedness and tenderness that went into Ireland’s greatest poet-playwright.” Ford directed a scene following the death of Cassidy’s beloved mother (a touching portrayal by Dame Flora Robson) calling for Taylor to sink to his knees by a pathetic hawthorn tree and sob. The take continued for an unbearable length until the director walked over and kicked Taylor in the shins, declaring, “You son-of-a-bitch Aussie, you made me cry! That’s a wrap!”

"Just you wait - there are things going to be written in this country by brutal drunken
men like me." Julie Chirstie is memorable as a lustful lass, but it is a young Maggie
Smith's performance as a timid bookseller (above) that will break your heart, as well
as John Cassidy's. "I'm a small, simple girl," she says. "I need a small, simple life,
not your terrible dreams and anger."

Taylor would highly regard Jack Cardiff (who subsequently directed Taylor in “The Liquidator” and “Dark of the Sun”) as “a photographic director” with a “wonderful visual sense,” but of all the positive reviews and compliments the actor received for “Young Cassidy,” the one he cherished the most was a simple note from John Ford: “Your performance could have gotten tears from a rock.”

"Zabriskie Point" starlet Daria Halprin poses with Rod Taylor.

In 1970, Taylor portrayed a real estate tycoon in “Zabriskie Point,” the only American movie directed by Italian avant-garde filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni. The second of three English-language pictures the director contracted to make for producer Carlo Ponti - the other two were “Blowup” (1966), starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, and “The Passenger” (1975), with Jack Nicholson - “Zabriskie Point” presented an abstract perspective on the counterculture’s rebellion against the Establishment as experienced by two children of the ‘60s.

She’s a pot-smoking anthropology student who also happens to be Taylor’s secretary. He’s a dropout, a rebel searching for a cause who’s not above larceny. The couple has hallucinatory sex in Death Valley, and she fantasizes that Taylor’s opulent desert retreat is destroyed in a spectacular explosion.

Taylor admitted he admired Antonioni’s work but didn’t feel he was the right type of actor for the director’s style. Antonioni disagreed. “He wooed me over three lunches,” Taylor said. “Never had a script, just said, ‘Rod, we just talk together. We do things together. We do script together. And we don’t tell anyone what we do.’ So I said, ‘OK, you’re the genius, let’s see.’”

The production was surrounded by controversy, including federal investigation of a possible violation of the Mann Act, forbidding the transporting of women across state lines for sexual purposes. Taylor was only shown scripts of his scenes. “I didn’t see any of the other scenes,” he recalled, “most of which was being shipped to Rome as soon as he shot it.” The actor remained unaware of any controversy, stating, “I wasn’t scarpering around nude or anything.” He insisted, “I didn’t let (Antonioni) do anything in my scenes that I didn’t believe was right. I played a good, strong, clean-cut businessman and he didn’t try to warp my character at all.” With a laugh, he added, “But he sure had fun with the beatniks, I tell you.”

The “beatniks” were played by a pair of non-actors. Daria Halprin, the daughter of San Francisco choreographer and postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin, made only three movies. She was married to Dennis Hopper from 1972 to 1976, and they had one child, novelist Ruthanna Hopper. Like Halprin, costar Mark Frechette appeared in only three films. He donated his salary from “Zabriskie Point” to a commune. Imprisoned for his part in an attempted bank robbery, he died in an apparent accident when a 150-pound set of weights fell on his neck in the prison gym, choking him to death. He was 27.

A year or so after guest-starring in the aforementioned “Kaw,” Rod Taylor, as he related in an interview, got a phone call from his business manager, saying a “strange guy” wanted to talk to him. The “strange guy” turned out to be Quentin Tarantino, who was in Germany, casting “Inglourious Basterds,” with the notion of Taylor playing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Taylor asked Tarantino, “Well, you're just across the Channel from England, aren’t you?” Taylor wondered why the filmmaker didn’t ask British actor Albert Finney. “He’s done Churchill, like, six times,” Taylor said. (Actually, Finney won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Churchill in the acclaimed 2002 HBO docudrama “The Gathering Storm.”) Tarantino replied, “If Rod Taylor turns me down, then I’ll get Albert Finney.”

Taylor studied news clips and documentaries to get Churchill’s voice and body language right. He later reflected that watching Tarantino direct “was the most exciting, exhilarating thing I’ve ever seen.” He insisted, “I’ve never met such a passionate, young director.”

Rod Taylor's swan song to cinema was his brief appearance
as Winston Churchill in "Inglourious Basterds" (2009).

After recalling the great directors he worked with, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Jack Cardiff, Taylor exclaimed to an interviewer, “I think Quentin, by his sheer outrageous going-against-the-rules and making something exciting and electrifying, will stand out more than any of the people I’ve told you I admire. He will make a difference to the way people regard movies…He’s crazy, genius-crazy, and I loved every second of it!”

“Inglourious Basterds” would be Rod Taylor’s final performance. 

He appeared in more than 50 motion pictures, guest-starred in more than 15 TV programs, starred in six television series and a dozen made-for-TV movies, but oddly enough, he only played an Australian in a handful of roles, including 1963's "The V.I.P.s" as a self-made Australian businessman, in an all-star cast featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Maggie Smith, and Orson Welles. (In 1977's "The Picture Show Man," Rod Taylor's first Australian film in over two decades, he was cast as a Texan because the producer was worried about his ability to speak with an Australian accent!)

Maggie Smith plays the dutiful secretary secretly in love with
her boss in "The V.I.P.s" (1963)...It seems as if Maggie would
always be falling in love with Rod on the screen.

As early in his career as 1964, Rod Taylor pretty much summed up his past, present, and future when he told The New York Times, “With me, it’s been part luck and part sheer, regimented planning.”

After his passing, his daughter, Felicia Taylor, a former correspondent and news anchor for CNN and CNBC, stated, “My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion – calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without.”

Clowning with Montgomery Clift on the set of "Raintree County" (1957)...