“Longmire” Season 2: Robert Taylor salutes ‘big star’ whose name he bears.
By Jay Bobbin, May 9, 2013

Robert Taylor knows what’s in a name. The Australian actor–who begins his second season playing a highly traditional American character when he returns as the title Wyoming sheriff in “Longmire”–shares the name of a performer who was a popular member of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer’s stable of stars from the 1930s through the 1950s.

“There haven’t been any complications from that at all,” the “Longmire” Taylor tells Zap2it, “but when I was a kid, people used to mention it to me all the time.  Not as many people have heard of him these days.  You ask kids who are 20 who he is, and their eyes glaze over–but they probably couldn’t tell you who the President of the United States is either.”

Films such as Waterloo Bridge, Ivanhoe and A Yank at Oxford have kept the earlier Taylor, who died in 1969 (and was the second husband of screen legend Barbara Stanwyck), a frequent presence on Turner Classic Movies.  “He was a big star,” acknowledges the current Taylor, “and he made some great movies.”

That Taylor played a lawman on television, too, in ABC’s 1959-62 show The Detectives.  The actor who plays the typically silent-but-strong Sheriff Walt Longmire says he would like to become as well known for his work, “hopefully.”

To see the whole article, go to Zap2it.com and look in From Inside the Box.