Trivia of Robert Taylor

Trivia of Robert Taylor

*He holds the Hollywood record for longest contract with one studio (MGM)--24 years from early 1934 to late 1958--and lowest contract salary (initially $35 a week, in 1934).

*He was the first American actor to star in a film made in England, A Yank at Oxford (1938).

*His flying interest emerged after Flight Command (1940), when he bought a single-engine plane and took lessons for a pilot's license. After World War II, when he served in the U.S. Navy from 1943-45 as a flight instructor and narrator of 17 training films, MGM bought him a twin-engine Beechcraft, which he flew regularly until the early 1960s.He named that airplane "Missy" , named after her wife Barbara Stanwyck.

*The favorite of all his films was Waterloo Bridge (1940).His second favorite movie was Camille (1936) and his favorite co-star was Greta Garbo.

*He was called "The New King" after Clark Gable's departure from MGM in 1953.

*After he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, his films were banned in Soviet-occupied Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Communists called for a boycott of his films in France.

*Actively supported his best friend Ronald Reagan's campaign to become the Republican Governor of California in 1966.After Taylor died of lung cancer at age of 57, he was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. His best friend Ronald Reagan, the Governor of California, gave the eulogy.