I missed acknowledging, last Friday, the 83rd birthday of Australian-born
actor Rod Taylor. In addition to starring in the 1960 science-fiction film The Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), Taylor appeared with Dennis Cole in the 1971 historical action series Bearcats! and the
1983 spy drama series Masquerade.
Taylor also featured in Fate Is the Hunter (1964), Hotel (1967), Nobody Runs Forever (1968), and The
Train Robbers (1973). He even did a turn as British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious asterds (2009).
However, many Rap Sheet readers may remember Taylor best for his performance as Travis McGee in Darker Than Amber, the 1970 cinematic adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s 1966 novel. As author Gar Anthony Haywood put it recently on Facebook, Taylor was the “best Travis McGee EVER.” If you’ve never seen the film, click here to watch its opening sequence as well as a late fight scene between Taylor and William Smith that apparently became much
more violent than the director had expected.
Monday, January 14, 2013
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8 comments:
Let's not forget DARK OF THE SUN.
Of course not, Bill. More on that here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_of_the_Sun
I also neglected to mention that Taylor starred with Lloyd Bochner in the 1960–1961 TV adventure drama Hong Kong, playing an American journalist who worked in that often trouble-prone and exotic city.
More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_%28TV_series%29
Significant turn by Taylor as well in _The Twilight Zone_ (along with Jim Hutton), "And When the Sky Was Opened" (1959).
The episodes from Hong Kong can be viewed on youtube. The first here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTVk51p0B6A
Thanks, Jeff. I should've known there'd be a Wikipedia article. I still remember seeing that one on the big screen. I was so impressed that I went out and bought the paperback and became a long-time reader of Wilbur Smith's novels.
I think his best performance was in Chuka
And he was the only incarnation of John Gardner's cowardly spy Boysie Oakes in "The Liquidator".
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