Robert Taylor: Male Beauty, Masculinity, and Stardom in Hollywood

Introduction

ENDURING STARDOM: ICONIC STATUS AND CONTEMPORARY (NON-)PRESENCE

Stars whose personas endure long after their deaths are not necessarily those with long or varied careers; perhaps the most obvious examples are Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. According to Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Monroe is still an icon of beauty and glamour and Dean synonymous with modern angst and youthful rebellion (2008: 355). The authors also argue that contemporary musicians Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and Gwen Stefani have reinvented themselves as modern-day Monroes, resulting both in new fans for the singers and a new generation of Monroe fans (356). I would also argue that the continued presence of some star images on the high street, such as on posters, calendars, and clothing, has resulted in a select few stars remaining concretely within public consciousness. Those who have never seen a film from the classical era would no doubt still recognize Monroe’s white dress from The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955), Audrey Hepburn’s black dress and pearls from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961), and Judy Garland’s gingham dress from The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939). Thus, some stars’ longevity is due to their association with a certain film—for example, James Stewart and It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946); a particular role—Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939); or costume(s)—Hepburn’s Givenchy dresses. These associations remain extremely recognizable over time and allow these stars’ images to endure.

As a key selling point for the 2012 Hollywood Costume exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the curators noted at the Hidden in Plain Sight: The Art of Hollywood Costume conference that Garland’s dress and ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz had been paired together for the first time since filming ceased in 1939. Furthermore, it marked the first time the slippers had been loaned outside of the US, and this was under the agreement that they would be returned by Thanksgiving for an annual celebration, subsequently being replaced with a replica pair. Following the conference, I attended the exhibition and noticed that, even though the slippers were torn and dulled with age and the dress looked distinctly ordinary, patrons stared at them in admiration, not because of their aesthetic appeal but because of their history and (now) iconic status. Far more visually impressive were the floor-length red sequin Adrian gown worn by Joan Crawford in The Bride Wore Red (Dorothy Arzner, 1937) and Hedy Lamarr’s ostrich-feather cape and gown from Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. DeMille, 1949), but there were no crowds there. I observed a woman looking between Crawford’s dress and a small screen playing the film; after commenting about the effort being wasted on a black-and-white film, she moved swiftly on. Perhaps the film and/or Crawford are not now famous enough to warrant further examination. But to dismiss the dress merely because the film it was worn in was shot in black-and-white is also to dismiss the craftsmanship and the almost mint condition of a garment over sixty years old, which someone somewhere clearly thought was worth preserving. Moreover, Crawford’s dress looks expensive and fits with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s (MGM) overtly glamorous house style, while Garland’s does not. This example helps to demonstrate that certain stars and a select number of films from Hollywood’s classical era subsequently get surrounded by so much hype that they become particularly memorable.

Auctions of stars’ costumes and personal belongings take the concept of closeness to a star even further and, as Ana Salzberg notes, offer an intimate proximity to the off-screen reality of the on-screen ideal (2014: 1). The June 2014 auction of items collected by a Hollywood star, Debbie Reynolds, which were worn by, used by, or belonged to other Hollywood stars, is an interesting case. Furthermore, Reynolds’s auction was broadcast live over the internet and bids could be placed in person, by telephone, or online, providing fans worldwide with the chance to literally own a piece of Hollywood history. Overall, the amount that items sold for reflected the enduring stardom of the former possessors/users. A pair of replica ruby slippers, not even used in the final version of The Wizard of Oz, and a raincoat once owned by Clark Gable both sold for thousands of dollars, while a suit worn by lost star Robert Cummings, in the somewhat forgotten remake of Stagecoach (Gordon Douglas, 1966), only attracted one bidder and sold for the asking price of $300.

Although Robert Taylor was a constructed persona, as with all star images this persona was created around a real person with an off-screen life. By weighting the aspects of Taylor’s private life against the lives of stars who became notorious through their association with, for example, drugs or multiple affairs and marriages (such as Garland, Lana Turner, or Elizabeth Taylor), Taylor’s extremely tame and, by all accounts, largely uneventful private life may be another contributing factor to his lost status. His only scandals stem from his marriage to the slightly older Barbara Stanwyck and his testimony at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, but publicity of these events was limited. Furthermore, although Taylor died aged just fifty-seven, this was not tragically young like enduring stars Dean (aged twenty-four), Jean Harlow (aged twenty-six), or Monroe (aged thirty-six).

Thus, enduring stardom can be the result of a scandalous private life, early death, a specific film role, or renewed interest in a star’s film, such as The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life being categorized as Christmas films in the last few decades, despite their original disappointment at the box office. Unlike his contemporaries Gable and James Stewart, there is no key film or definitive role with which Taylor is associated and, therefore, remembered for. The reasons why some star images endure over time while others do not—or why some films and stars are reclaimed by modern audiences—is a vast topic and not one that I have space to go into in this book. However, I hope that by discussing this phenomenon I have set up certain ideas about the nature of stars and stardom over time, either through their enduring nature or—in Taylor’s case—their lostness or forgottenness, both of which are worthy topics for more extensive study.

WHY ROBERT TAYLOR?

This book emerges out of three distinct passions of mine: classical Hollywood cinema, stars of the era, and the study of gender, particularly American masculinity. This study not only offers a reappraisal of Taylor’s career but, as noted, proposes to interpret why he can now be regarded as a principal lost star of Hollywood cinema—both in academia and in general accounts of film history—in spite of his long and productive career and sustained popularity. A central argument of this book is that, by having an image built around the four most conventional and dominant social norms in Western society—whiteness, heterosexuality, American-ness, and maleness—the ideological conservatism of Taylor’s star persona may have resulted in his being considered too normal and therefore unworthy of academic study, leading to his absence within the field of film studies. But Taylor’s corresponding absence in most general accounts of film history is also noteworthy and may be the result of his not conforming to the criteria of enduring stardom.

James MacDowell suggests that the clichéd and conventional happy ending of Hollywood films has resulted in this type of ending being overlooked in academia, despite its tradition and extremely successful function. When the happy ending is discussed, as MacDowell notes, it is usually in derogatory terms such as standard, predictable, or typical, since the most fundamental assumption about the ‘happy ending’ is that it is a ubiquitous feature of Hollywood cinema (2013: 1). A similar argument can be made for stars like Taylor, whose embodiment of typical dominant Western social norms also render them standard and normal, and therefore almost invisible within cinematic history. However, just as the dominant happy ending convention is key to informing us about the film industry, the study of a conventional star like Taylor also allows us to interpret key aspects of how the industry, the studio system, and the star system worked—and does so much more effectively than the study of unusual or odd stars who worked against the system.

The hypothesis that I put forward is that Taylor’s lost status is partly due to the way he appeared to seamlessly fit changes and advances in the film industry, allowing him to have a constant but un-dynamic career which has also led to him escaping legendary status today. However, it is Taylor’s very normalness (or ordinariness) which makes him particularly interesting and worthy of study, since he seems to present an ideal opportunity for tracing changes and developments in the Hollywood film industry of the classical era and beyond it. Taylor’s enduring success and continued appeal, combined with a lack of both critical impact of his films and controversy in his private life, has undoubtedly added to his lost status; but he also raises several issues around concepts of male beauty, aging male stars, and American masculinity in the prewar and postwar years, all of which will be discussed in the book. Furthermore, Taylor is an interesting case study of a male star whose early persona was built predominantly around his extraordinary good looks, but who maintained a long and successful screen career throughout the remainder of his lifetime. As will be shown through the mostly chronological study, Taylor’s ability to adapt and change where necessary, while remaining essentially the same at the core, was another key factor of his star persona.

As Richard Dyer (1979) proposes, all star images consist of an ordinary/extraordinary paradox, but this tension becomes overtly obvious in Taylor’s star persona since his off-screen persona was so consistently bound to ideas of ordinariness, while his on-screen persona centered on ways of presenting his looks to audiences. In spite of his unusual position as a leading Hollywood star for over three decades, publicity on Taylor’s off-screen persona reflected a somewhat normal existence, with repeated references being made to his ordinary upbringing in a small town in Nebraska. Later in this chapter, and subsequently in Chapters Two and Six, I discuss this tension in relation to Taylor’s off-screen persona through the analysis of how he was presented in extra-filmic texts, specifically film fan magazines and press articles. Persistently promoted as an ordinary American youth at the start of his career, the only extraordinary element of Taylor’s early persona was his looks. However, Taylor subsequently proved his extraordinariness by becoming a leading star at MGM extremely rapidly; furthermore, he became half of a celebrity couple when he married film star Barbara Stanwyck, which further distanced him from his somewhat ordinary small-town roots.

On-screen, the extraordinary elements which quickly defined Taylor’s star persona were his remarkable looks and his persistent position as object of the erotic gaze, unmistakably highlighted to audiences through a combination of cinematic techniques such as framing, lighting, close-ups, and profile shots, some of which, as will be discussed later, were used repeatedly throughout his career. Although the ordinariness of Taylor’s star persona was mostly played out off-screen and conveyed to audiences biographically in the press, he also portrayed several ordinary characters on-screen (including students, trainee doctors, ranchers, and soldiers), particularly in the first two decades of his career.

Some of Taylor’s on-screen characters play out the ordinary/extraordinary paradox more overtly than others, principally because of their ordinary backgrounds and extraordinary achievements within the narrative. Some early examples are discussed in Chapter Two’s case studies: Robert Merrick in Magnificent Obsession (John Stahl, 1935) progresses from rich layabout to celebrated brain surgeon in the space of six years, and Lee Sheridan in A Yank at Oxford (Jack Conway, 1938) is both a typical American student and a celebrated athlete. Similarly, in the 1940s his Sergeant Bill Dane in Bataan (Tay Garnett, 1943) is an ordinary World War II soldier who finds extraordinary hidden strength and bravery when faced with certain death. Taylor’s title character in Johnny Eager (Mervyn LeRoy, 1941) is slightly different in that he consciously performs ordinariness through his guise as a taxi driver to cover for his extraordinary existence as an underworld gang leader. Although Taylor’s image became more brutal with age, and he portrayed several more extraordinary characters in the 1950s—including a hypermasculine Roman soldier in Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951) and medieval knights in Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe, 1952) and Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953)—he still retained a sense of ordinariness, mostly through his now familiar and recognizable gestures and vocal intonation. Important scenes from individual films are discussed more fully in Chapters Three to Six, predominantly in the case studies.

Beginning with an analysis of a six-part autobiographical piece from Picturegoer magazine in 1938, I lay out the key elements of Taylor’s persona as established at the start of his career. I then use these to trace his on- and off-screen personas through further analysis of filmic and extra-filmic texts located within the socio-historical and industrial contexts of their production. With a career spanning from 1934 to 1969, key events which helped shape and advance Taylor’s persona, such as the breakdown of the Hollywood studio system and the rise of television, are also referred to. The themes of women, American-ness, and masculinity were the most dominant and enduring elements of Taylor’s star persona, helping to place him comfortably within hegemonic patriarchal society and further aiding his fit. Additionally, these themes are repeatedly referenced across texts and decades, adding a sense of consistency to Taylor’s persona even as he aged.

Since I argue that Taylor successfully transformed himself from initially being presented as a male pinup to a successful and believable tough guy, I present a complete overview of his screen career in order to best demonstrate these changes; case studies of films across different decades and genres help illustrate this further. Thus, the book sets out to examine Taylor’s on- and off-screen star personas across his whole career, while comparing him with other male stars working at the time (particularly Gable, Stewart, and Tyrone Power), the Hollywood film industry, and ideas around national and masculine identities.

Taylor was born Spangler Arlington Burgh in Filley, Nebraska, on August 5, 1911, the only child of a doctor (and former grain merchant) and his poorly wife. Graduating from Pomona College in 1933, Taylor aimed to become a doctor like his father (Taylor, 1938a). After signing with MGM in 1934, he got his first bit part in the Will Rogers vehicle Handy Andy (David Butler, 1934), which helped to develop his early persona as a cocky young American. Averaging 3.5 films a year in the 1930s, Taylor made six feature films in 1935 alone; the last of these, Magnificent Obsession, made when he was loaned out to Universal, turned him into a major star. MGM then kept Taylor under exclusive contract until 1958, and he became the longest-running contract player in Hollywood history.

On the rare occasions when Taylor is mentioned in academic literature, it is usually in a passing reference to his being Greta Garbo’s co-star in Camille (George Cukor, 1936) or his starring in Billy the Kid (David Miller, 1941) and Quo Vadis. This has resulted in no substantial analysis of Taylor’s star persona or performances which, given his sustained popularity and his substantial film and television output, is both noteworthy and peculiar. This book provides the first academic study of Taylor and looks in detail at the construction and development of his on- and offscreen star persona; consequently, the study encompasses the entirety of Taylor’s career. The extra-filmic publicity material discussed covers his early career, from the mid-1930s to his obituaries in 1969. Additionally, it is necessary to consider the industrial and historical context in which Taylor became a star, and the periods when particular films were made, in order to place his on-screen persona within its social, cultural, political, and industrial frameworks and trace changes in Hollywood and America which are reflected in his stardom. I make reference to these where necessary, for example, the direct relationship between Bataan and World War II, and how the film helped to develop key elements of Taylor’s persona, particularly his position as a symbol of national (American) identity in wartime. Although I am not attempting to produce a full historical account of the period—since several other detailed accounts already exist—it is nonetheless imperative for this study that I discuss how these changes affected Taylor’s star persona and its subsequent development over time; therefore, broader historical events will be flagged up where necessary in order to reflect this.

Taylor’s screen presence was most dominantly marked by his looks and American-ness, and he is probably the least remembered of MGM’s leading men of the studio era. Although dismissively calling Taylor never more (or less) than a competent actor, never a distinctive personality, Gary Carey adds that he was nonetheless a bona fide star for over two decades (1981: 238). But, if Taylor was never a distinctive personality, as Carey suggests, we may question how he had such a long and successful career at MGM, Hollywood’s most powerful studio. Indeed, we can make direct comparisons between Taylor and other actors of the era—perhaps most notably Robert Montgomery, another MGM contract player, and Twentieth Century Fox’s Tyrone Power—with regard to looks, appeal to female audiences, and the types of roles they were given. Taylor even starred in the remake of MGM’s pre-Code film The Man in Possession (Sam Wood, 1931), renamed Personal Property (W. S. Van Dyke, 1937), only six years after Montgomery had starred in the original. Despite these three actors’ early personas being constructed around a combination of normal American masculinity and extreme male prettiness, the ordinary/extraordinary paradox which relentlessly marked Taylor’s screen presence throughout his career was still referred to in his final roles, as will be discussed in later chapters. At the end of Taylor’s career in 1969, Power was long dead and, although Montgomery moved into television as host, producer, and occasional actor on Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950–57), he retired after its final run. His daughter Elizabeth Montgomery’s fame eclipsed his own, thanks to her star-making role as Samantha Stephens on Bewitched (ABC, 1964–72), paving the way for a new generation of female television stars including Barbara Eden and Julie Newmar.

Throughout this book, I present new ways of thinking about and looking at Taylor’s star persona, particularly his status as a lost star (through his forgotten-ness today), the concept of his being a typical star (fitting the system so well) and, therefore, as a star who can tell us a lot about the Hollywood film industry in the classical era. This not only allows me to reappraise Taylor’s career as an individual star but to more broadly trace developments and changes in the Hollywood film industry as a result, thus proving that Taylor is a telling and worthwhile case study of classical-era stardom.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

It is worth noting here that when Taylor began his career in the mid-1930s, the notion of stardom related primarily to performers working within the film industry. By the end of his career, music was at the forefront of the media industry, a result of the unprecedented popularity of Elvis Presley and The Beatles, which necessitated a new definition of the term stardom. Today, celebrity and stardom are closely linked terms and are less likely to be applied to film performers than to those within the music, sport, and television industries (Holmes and Redmond, 2006). Although celebrity studies is a growing field within academic research (Turner, 2004; Holmes and Redmond, 2006, 2007), P. David Marshall traces the use of the term celebrity to the nineteenth century, when it was used to convey notoriety (1997: 5). This definition can be applied to today’s Z-list celebrities since, as fame becomes more ubiquitous, so its currency is seen to be devalued, at least at the level of public discourse (Holmes and Redmond, 2006: 11). Even though Taylor was a cinematic star, the term celebrity could also be applied to him, particularly in relation to his fandom, off-screen publicity, and status as half of a celebrity couple with Stanwyck; as Christine Geraghty notes, the term celebrity is particularly used when discussing people’s private lives rather than their professional roles (2000). Chapter Two examines Taylor’s off-screen persona through a range of extra-filmic material, which would allow for a celebrity studies reading. However, due to word length constraints, I focus on concepts of stardom throughout.

Because I examine Taylor’s career within the confines of the Hollywood studio system in the classical era, I look in depth at how his persona was created and molded by MGM. Referring to existing studies on stardom and masculinity, I indicate how these can be used to interpret Taylor’s star persona, and how these broad areas work together in helping to contextualize Taylor’s persona and his positioning as a white, heterosexual, American male within both Hollywood cinema and the social conditions which created his image. Although the study primarily focuses on Taylor and his work, his star image also raises broader questions surrounding white American males more generally and how this type of performer changed before, throughout, and after Taylor’s lifetime. Consequently, I also refer to similar performers throughout.

Chapters Two to Six analyze Taylor’s on- and off-screen personas through a mostly chronological approach, in order to indicate developments, unity, and persistence. Chapter Two looks specifically at Taylor’s off-screen persona through an examination of film fan magazines and newspaper articles from across his career. I discuss the increasing importance of fan magazines for film scholars investigating historical star personas, before examining Taylor’s extra-filmic career as a particular case study. Chapters Three to Six then trace the construction of Taylor’s on-screen persona from his film debut in 1934 to his final screen work preceding his death. Chapter Three concentrates on Taylor’s 1930s image as an All-American Ladies Man, from his first role in 1934 to his final film of the decade, Remember? (Norman Z. McLeod) in 1939. The chapter concludes with two detailed case studies of Taylor’s performances within specific films of the 1930s, discussing in depth how his screen image as matinee idol and male pinup was created and maintained throughout the decade, regardless of his film role, resulting in his rapid rise as a top Hollywood star. The films analyzed in Chapter Three are Magnificent Obsession, which I have termed Taylor’s star-making film, and A Yank at Oxford, which cements the cocky all-American persona Taylor molded in this decade and combines it with his strong physical appeal introduced in earlier films.

Chapter Four discusses Taylor’s on-screen persona from 1940 to 1949, highlighting the new, tougher persona created for him around the time that the United States entered World War II. Here, in particular, the placing of Taylor’s persona within historical and industrial contexts is vital, and the chapter’s case studies on two films made before America entered the war show the much tougher masculinity that Taylor was now being associated with, as well as demonstrating a clear move away from, the matinee idol persona which had gained him initial fame in the 1930s. In the first of these, Johnny Eager, Taylor both plays a gangster and undertakes his first true antihero role. The second, Bataan, was the first film about World War II combat, and Taylor’s role as a tough army sergeant further advanced his manlier screen persona, added a wartime sensibility to his image, and moved him away from roles about relationships with women, placing him instead within situations of male bonding and camaraderie.

Chapter Five examines Taylor’s film career from 1950 to 1958, the year that he left MGM. While his extensive work in Westerns at this time advanced Taylor’s homosocial screen image, his action-adventure films created a nostalgic link to Hollywood’s past and his own past as a romantic idol; only now the romantic elements of his persona were combined with more mature virility and brutality than they had been previously. This chapter also includes the book’s final two case studies. The first, on Quo Vadis, shows how Taylor’s maleness was being rebranded as hypermasculine in his action-adventure films, particularly through the presentation of his hardened body in ancient costumes. Subsequently, the case study on The Law and Jake Wade (John Sturges, 1958) demonstrates how Taylor’s masculinity reverted back to normal through his work in Westerns, while at the same time flagging up homosocial elements established in earlier films of other genres. Taylor’s work in this decade reaffirmed his heterosexual identity