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eBook Category: General Nonfiction
eBook Description: Reluctant Witness: Robert Taylor, Hollywood, & Communism is the exhaustive biography of the life of Golden Era movie star, Robert Taylor. He was called "The Man With The Perfect Profile," and some considered him the most beautiful man to ever grace the movie world. Yet there was more to him, lots more. He was complicated. He saw history--movie history and world history--and he was part of both.

eBook Publisher: Tease Publishing LLC, Published: 2008, 2008
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2008

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [401 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [362 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [352 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [403 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [340 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [367 KB] , hiebook (KML) [840 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [430 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [339 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [430 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [466 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [537 KB]
Words: 119136
Reading time: 340-476 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 9781934678633

"...Linda Alexander has created a verbal album of a man's life and passions, loves and triumphs. I now feel as though I knew him, and upon reading of his death, mourned him as I would a friend. No greater accolade can be can be said of a biographer, than the fact that the reader was made to feel as though they were actually present ... experiencing each moment in time."--Best-selling author Debra Shiveley Welch

"...no better author to write it."--Terry Taylor, regarding Linda Alexander's book about his dad, Robert Taylor

"...Taylor was ... very much a love statement ... phenomenal in close-ups! ... his face didn't hide anything. When you got in there ... you saw a lot.... he just knew, it excited him."--Chad Everett, star of TV's 'Medical Center' &, with Robert Taylor, the movie, Johnny Tiger

Arlington Brugh would have never become Robert Taylor if the situation hadn't been just right. Though Hollywood was no longer in its infancy, the country's fascination with the town was still in adolescence. The business of making movies was learning, making mistakes, and when all went well, Hollywood was getting very, very rich. Star-building was the not-so-secret weapon used to create profit, mainly for studio executives.

If not for the studios, Hollywood wouldn't have been Hollywood. They became mother, father, sibling, accountant, business manager, lover, hand-holder, and the authority on all that was moral and true and right for their stars, in their opinion, anyway. And after all, they held the contracts and the purse strings, and their opinion was ultimately what mattered.

Countless young men and women wanted to go to Hollywood from all parts of the country, and the world, to become a "star." That was their dream. There was no shortage of candidates, and in comparison to the droves coming into town and begging for the chance, few actually made their way into the system. Why?

Money. Hollywood was always about money. If an individual was selected to be recreated and reborn into a star, and the selection was a wise one, that person became a studio property. Property equaled assets. Assets equaled profits. And profits equaled the perpetuation of the dream. Then the process started all over again.

Bottom line, money was the desired, the required end result.

Were the stars, those properties, the ones getting wealthy? Not in the early days. Not really. They had a job, albeit a glamorous one, but in many ways things for them were not so much unlike going to work for a corporation. The individual auditioned, and his or her resume was reviewed. Pros and cons were discussed behind closed doors. If the ingénue was selected to work for a specific studio, he or she received, and signed, a contract for a certain amount of money per month, per year. The now-employee took assignments, in this case, movies, as they were doled out. If the actor/employee didn't like a job, he or she could negotiate with the studio head. Occasionally that would yield results to their liking, but more often, the employee was sent back out to do the job as originally scheduled.

Such was the atmosphere when Arlington was signed to his MGM contract in early 1934. Talkies were a somewhat new delight. Routinely converting films to sound had only really started less than six years earlier. American movie attendance equaled about ninety million dollars in paid admissions from 1926--1930, barely a handful of years before Arlington Brugh became Robert Taylor.

The studios generally owned most of the country's theaters. In those early years, the five major studios owned about 2600 first-run theaters in the United States. They generated three quarters of the revenue's total bottom line ... clearly a monopoly. Again, the game belonged to the studios, and to the men that ran them.

Arlington Brugh became Robert Taylor at the suggestion of Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer's "close friend" and right-hand assistant. In various documents she was also called his secretary, his aide, or his second-in-command. Whatever her official title, Ida was a powerhouse all unto herself. She had come to MGM from the offices of Herbert Hoover, where she served him well and faithfully as a publicity assistant during his campaign for president, and then as his secretary once he was in office. From Hoover, she went on to be hired by Mayer, who had campaigned heavily for, and who had considerable private influence with, Hoover.

Ida made suggestions to Hoover in support of issues that could promote Mayer's interests, and she made suggestions to Mayer that could benefit Hoover's administration. Mayer would suggest political appointees. In one case, a friend of his was selected to become an ambassador; in another instance, someone he could rely on became the head of California's internal revenue. Louis B. Mayer ultimately played a part in the appointment of Herbert Hoover, Jr. as head of the radio department of Western Air Express. This was a win-win situation for both Hoover and Mayer. And for Ida, she got her dream job. She was well placed within the Republican Party, and that figured greatly into how quickly she climbed the MGM ladder as an insider, and Mayer's closest confidante.

She was a solid bridge between Herbert Hoover and Louis B. Mayer. In turn for Hoover's favors, Mayer opened access to Hollywood for Hoover's administration. Ida was respected throughout the studio as Mayer's assistant, and her place in the middle of these powerful men gave her considerable influence and her own real sense of power. She was called a "mother figure" by some contract players, as well as "the only woman executive whose advice was respected by the male stars."

This proved to be true with Arlington when Ida selected the name he would become forever known by on the silver screen, and for the rest of his life. He and a member of MGM's publicity department, Kay Mulvey, originally petitioned to have his name changed to Ramsey Taylor, but that never went anywhere. Ida's direction won out.

New MGM contract players were assigned to different department heads to be re-worked as needed. One such person was Don Loomis. Sometimes called "MGM's muscleman," Loomis' job was to bulk up actors who had potential, but who needed greater physical stature. James Stewart was also put under Loomis' direction. He said Loomis was "...a great, enormous muscleman with a gym shirt on and his neck just came right down. And every time he talked, muscles seemed to come out. He was a weight lifter...."

Loomis determined that Bob's "shoulders were too narrow," and his "neck was too thin." Through the use of bar bells and extensive physical exercise, the new actor was re-sculpted. Bob's weight went from 148 pounds to 168 pounds under Loomis' skilled attention. His chest gained five inches and his neck went from over fourteen inches to sixteen inches.

With ongoing workouts, lessons on everything from physical deportment to how to talk to the press, and a myriad of other types of personal attention, the now-named Robert Taylor was indoctrinated into the MGM star-making process, and he was a fast and intuitive learner.

Bob had not forgotten the assignment given to him by Oliver Hinsdell to figure out the mysteries of the statues. The one that stuck in his mind, Solitude of the Soul, continued to frustrate him as he worked to get good enough for his first real role in front of the cameras. He had to sit for fifteen minutes each day and engage in the art of relaxation, and Sundays were not excluded. After six months, he walked into Oliver Hinsdell's office, dropped into a chair and, without a single word, as Bob said, he "demanded that he look at me." His arms hung limp, all tension drained from his face. Soon after, he was cast in his first picture.

Bob got full credit for his part in Handy Andy, a light comedy starring Will Rogers, and released in July of 1934. Rogers died the following year, becoming best known as a "humorist" despite the over fifty films officially listed to him. On the Handy Andy shoot, Bob saw him as a kindly older man who "...showed such considerate patience with me when I first acted before a camera."