The Sentimental Bloke (Continued): 3 Things You Didn't Know About Rod Taylor

Rod Taylor starred in "Young Cassidy," "The Birds," and "The Time Machine."

Three things you already know: Rod Taylor’s best performance as an actor? Portraying Ireland’s fiery socialist playwright Sean O’Casey in “Young Cassidy” (1965). Rod Taylor’s most memorable film? Alfred Hitchcock’s nature-goes-berserk classic “The Birds” (1963). Rod Taylor’s most popular movie role? George, the virile but tenderhearted inventor in “The Time Machine” (1960). Here are three things you didn't know about Rod Taylor.

1. Rod Taylor’s most obscure film role? Funny you should ask.

Not unlike Samson, Steve Reeves is about to bring down the house in "Hercules."

When a Montana-born bodybuilder named Steve Reeves went to Italy in 1957 to star in “Hercules,” the former Mr. America – Mr. Universe opened the floodgates for a deluge of sword-and-sandal sagas featuring greased-up American bodybuilders and physique models. The lack of acting skills, the corny plots, sloppy dubbed dialogue, and primitive special effects all actually succeeded in giving these movies an enduring campy allure.

 

An embarrassed 48-year-old Alan Ladd rushes to the
wardrobe trailer on the set of "Duel of Champions." 

Beyond the gym, a bona fide Hollywood actor occasionally journeyed overseas to appear in one of these costume epics. Cameron Mitchell, critically acclaimed for originating the role of “Happy” Loman in “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway and acknowledged as one of the founding members of The Actor’s Studio in New York City, starred in several sword-and-sandal pictures, as well as spaghetti westerns, in the 1960s. Alan Ladd, best known in Hollywood for westerns, including “Shane,” and for film noir, such as “This Gun for Hire,” played the commander of a Roman legion in 1961’s “Duel of Champions.” A year earlier, Rod Taylor got top billing for wearing a masculine miniskirt in “Colossus and the Amazon Queen.”

 

"Colossus and the Amazon Queen" was released under various titles in Europe.

The film wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1964, and when it surfaced on home video in the 1980s, Rod Taylor laughingly told an interviewer, “You found the skeleton in my closet!”

The muscle-bound hero, Glaucus (there’s nobody named “Colossus” to be seen here), is played by Ed Fury (born Edmund Holovchik), a golden-locked bodybuilder who usually played musclemen called Ursus or Maciste. Fury also did nude modeling for gay magazines and calendars, as well as appearing in gay 8mm movies.

 

Rod Taylor reminds Ed Fury, "Don't forget,
I was the one who thought up the Trojan Horse!"

The story, purposely played for laughs (complete with an incongruous, upbeat jazzy music score), is about the misadventures of Glaucus and his conman of a sidekick, Pirros (Rod Taylor), two veterans of the Trojan War who find themselves abducted by a tribe of Amazon warrioresses.

 

Amazons were traditionally depicted in Classical art with one breast bared to
better steady their bows. Speaking of which, in her role as an Amazon commander,
Daniela Rocca always seems at risk of experiencing a wardrobe malfunction.

There’s a humorless running gag in which the heroic Glaucus keeps getting knocked out, while Taylor spends most of his screen time mugging and hamming it up for the camera in a prissy fashion (his character’s voice was dubbed – poorly – by another actor). The film features a bevy of Italian beauties, including Gianna Maria Canale, Steve Reeves’ leading lady in “Hercules” (in which she portrayed, coincidentally, the Queen of the Amazons), Dorian Gray (born Maria Luisi Mangini), best known for her role in Fellini’s “The Nights of Cabiria,” and Daniela Rocca, who starred opposite Marcello Mastroianni in “Divorce Italian Style.” The Amazons’ male captives are depicted as over-the-top caricatures of emasculated slaves - effeminate menials who toil at housekeeping tasks when not gossiping amongst themselves.

 

Rod Taylor is seconds away from - no kidding - trying to cop a feel in this scene.
(Is that a 12" vinyl LP on the wall?)

In an issue of Rod Taylor’s fan newsletter, someone inquired, “When did you make ‘Colossus and the Amazon Queen’? How do you feel about it appearing on television now?” Taylor responded, “(A) Obviously when I had a lapse of sanity. (B) Very embarrassed.”

 

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg cavort in Rome's
famed Trevi Fountain in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita."

“To be honest, I had a devious motive for making that movie,” Taylor later confessed. “It was because of my nasty love life.” Between his first and second marriage, Taylor had an affair with blond bombshell Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born sex symbol who burst to international stardom with a lustful role as Marcello Mastroianni’s unattainable dream girl in director Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” in 1960. Taylor’s role in “Colossus and the Amazon Queen” gave him the “excuse to get free air fare to Italy to see her.”

 

Anita Ekberg and Rod Taylor pose for the paparazzi
(a term originated by Federico Fellini in "La Dolce Vita"
with the character of a photographer named Paparazzo).

Taylor originally met Ekberg in 1959 on a stopover in Italy when he was filming an episode of a TV anthology series for CBS, and she was on-location for “La Dolce Vita.” Their highly publicized romance lasted three years, and they even considered marriage, until Taylor broke it off in 1962. “I couldn’t keep up with the pace,” he admitted. “It was like an Errol Flynn movie everyday.” As a matter of fact, Ekberg had well-publicized affairs with Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, and Tyrone Power. “I love Anita, and I hope I’ll always have her friendship” Rod Taylor declared. “I wish she would discard this caricature of herself which she shows to the world and be her real self.” Coincidentally, Anita Ekberg died a mere four days after Rod Taylor’s passing in January 2015.

As for “Colossus and the Amazon Queen,” Taylor said, “I’ve been trying to hide that fiasco ever since. Releasing it now is like digging up a porno film from out of my past.”

 

It's almost like the end of the original "Star Wars" movie as Daniela Rocca,
Rod Taylor, Ed Fury, and Dorian Gray emerge for a curtain call in "Colossus
and the Amazon Queen." The guy in the middle is an annoying comic-relief
Egyptian inventor named Sopho.

2. By 1997, Rod Taylor was pretty much in semi-retirement when Australian writer-director Stephan Elliott approached him with a meaty role in a dark comedy titled “Welcome to Woop Woop,” a follow-up of sorts to his 1994 cult favorite “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” Talking about what could be called “The Road Warrior” meets “Something Wild” meets “Pulp Fiction,” Elliott said, “People will laugh and they will be offended. Ultimately…it’s very tongue-in-cheek. A silly, silly movie.”

Johnathon Schaech (best known as the lead singer of The Oneders in 1995’s “That Thing You Do!” written and directed by Tom Hanks) plays a smooth-talking con artist who sells authentic “Australian bush cockatoos” in the back alleys of New York City. When the birds are accidentally set free, he follows them Down Under, where a nymphomaniac virgin (Susie Porter) shanghais him to a remote settlement in the Outback called Woop Woop (Australian slang for any insignificant town in the middle of nowhere). The movie was filmed on-location near the towering red cliffs around Alice Springs.

 

Susie Porter and Johnathon Schaech strike a publicity pose
for "Welcome to Woop Woop."

Woop Woop is domineered by an uncouth, brutish bloke called Daddy-O. The villagers, who seemingly subsist on a diet of canned pineapple (while Daddy-O and his inner circle of cronies enjoy wiener schnitzel), process dog food from kangaroo roadkill and watch outdoor screenings of “The Sound of Music” and “South Pacific.” Rodgers & Hammerstein show tunes are piped nonstop through loudspeakers, and anyone who attempts to leave the shantytown is shot.

As recalled by Stephan Elliott, when Rod Taylor’s name came up for the role of Daddy-O, “I said he is such an American now, I wonder if he could do it.” The filmmaker asked Taylor’s agent if the actor could pull off the Australian accent. The agent said, “Why don’t you just go around to his house and knock on the door.” Elliott related, “So I did, he threw it open and said, “G’day, how the fuck are you?’ I said to him immediately, ‘You have the job.’ “

 

Before "Welcome to Woop Woop" (1997), the last major feature film Rod Taylor
appeared in was 1973's "The Train Robbers," with (left to right) Ben Johnson,
Christopher George, Ann-Margret, and John Wayne, who said of Taylor, "I know
him to be a true professional and a fine actor. But more than that he's a real man
and a great human being."

Taylor remembered, “I fell off the sofa laughing when I read the script. It was the most outrageous comedy I’d ever read and certainly the most outrageous comedy I’d ever acted in. I usually do nice sophisticated comedies…gentlemanly roles. But here I am an Australian playing this bloody dinosaur with tattoos. It’s just fantastic.”

The Sunday Tasmanian noted, “The heart and soul of ‘Woop Woop’ is the sensational performance by…expat actor Rod Taylor.” According to that newspaper piece, director Elliott believed that performance “grew out of the fact that Taylor, a genuine knockabout Aussie, has lived and worked in America for so long that he has been forced to suppress his natural self for 40 years.”

"You've got pretty sizable balls, young man - for a Yank." Watch "Welcome to
Woop Woop" and you'll learn such Australian slang as "piss" for beer, "seppo"
for an American (something to do with septic tank), and "drongo" for a stupid
person. For good measure, Taylor throws in the Italian v-bomb "vaffanculo."

Elliott maintained, “The true base of what he was has been simmering away under the surface – like boiling to get out – and this role came along and he just explodes on the screen. I usually tell the actors I am working with to turn it up a bit. Rod is the first actor I have worked with where I had to keep telling him to turn it down a bit. Once it was unleashed the energy coming out of the man was just terrifying. I was there going ‘down, Rod, down, cool it, baby.’ “ Elliott added, “To make it even more perfect, his comic timing is so spot-on.” Costar Johnathon Schaech praised Taylor, saying, “He is a sensational actor. Charisma, balls, strength, power, emotion and great comedic timing."

(Left to right) Maggie Kirkpatrick, Susie Porter, Rod Taylor, Dee Smart (and
cockatoo) poortray a close-knit family in the Outback of "Welcome to Woop Woop."
The movie features a brief appearance by Tina Louise (best known as Ginger, the
castaway movie star, on "Gilligan's Island") as a New York socialite-cockatoo buyer.
Australian comedian Barry Humphries, better known for his bombastic alter ego,
Dame Edna Everage, has a brief but hilarious cameo as an Outback gas station
attendant appropriately called Blind Wally.

A Toronto reviewer commented, “Especially notable is Rod Taylor’s version of the blustery autocrat, Daddy-O…Taylor seems to have gone through an acting rebirth since his days as the square-jawed lover boy from the ‘60s action movies.” An Australian critic noted, “In a stroke of inspired casting, Rod Taylor looms larger than life as the lewd Daddy-O and basically steals the film. His character is vile and vulgar, yet Taylor manages to inject a dose of charm that is hard to ignore. The scene in the bar when he tap dances on electric sparking feet is quite sensational.”

Pee-wee Herman dancing to the song "Tequila" in those stunning, white platform
shoes pales in comparison to Rod Taylor's bartop choreography to "Shall We Dance?"
from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "The King and I." The literally electrifying
softshoe comes from attaching battery jumper cables to Daddy-O's sneakers...Did we
mention the picture's climactic intervention by a mythical, 20-foot tall red kangaroo?

3. From his “days as the square-jawed lover boy” in the ‘60s to his “acting rebirth” as Daddy-O in “Welcome to Woop Woop” in 1997 and then as Winston Churchill in “Inglourious Basterds” in 2009, Rod Taylor maintained an interest in painting. His roots were in the fine arts. In a 1997 interview, he recalled his teenage years, saying, “I was…not a hippie, not a beatnik…a bohemian. I went to East Sydney Tech (East Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College, home of Australia’s National Art School), and that’s how I got into the business, doing illustrative stuff and ceramic pottery.” He also developed a talent crafting furniture.

The son of an architectural draftsman, he worked as a commercial artist, designing and painting window displays for a prominent Sydney department store. It was after watching Laurence Olivier’s performance in a touring Old Vic staging of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” that Rod Taylor decided to become an actor.

In 1987, when his CBS series “Outlaws” was canceled during its first season, Taylor told an interviewer, “I still paint and draw, which was for the therapy until recently. I didn’t know there was any money in it until Barbara Sinatra sold one of my pen-and-wash sketches of a tennis player for $2500 at a charity auction. I thought, ‘Forget that silly CBS gig. Tennis anyone?’ “

Rod Taylor painted this abstract study.

As already alluded to, Taylor also dabbled in pottery and furniture-making. “I’ve got a workshop with a lot of dangerous toys,” he said in 1997, “and I like to make tables and chairs.” When it came to expressing himself on canvas, Taylor reflected in 1992, “To put what you see on paper is the same as funneling what you feel through yourself as a performer. When I am working like hell as an actor, I paint. Acting doesn’t suffer. Art doesn’t suffice. Art doesn’t feed me or fill the void when I am not working. If I haven’t worked for six months, I can’t paint.”

As early as 1961, Rod Taylor insisted, “The most important thing in my life is my work. I couldn’t live without it. And I don’t do it just for the money. I love it.”