I received this message recently: Hello, I’m a French journalist and filmmaker doing a documentary about Taylor and Stanwyck. Is there a way I could contact you ? Thanks in advance. Taylor biographers Linda J. Alexander and Charles Tranberg were also contacted and Ms. Alexander is being flown out to Los Angeles to talk to the filmmaker, Anne-Cecile Genre. The films are a series about iconic Hollywood marriages and she is doing Mr. Taylor and Ms. Stanwyck now.
I haven’t heard back from Ms. Genre but I’ll be very interested to see her film.
To see Ms. Genre’s other work, go to: http://annececilegenre.com/#top.
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About giraffe44
I became a Robert Taylor fan at the age of 15 when his TV show, "The Detectives" premiered. My mother wanted to watch it because she remembered Mr. Taylor from the thirties. I took one look and that was it. I spent the rest of my high school career watching Robert Taylor movies on late night TV, buying photos of him, making scrapbooks and being a typical teenager. College, marriage and career intervened. I remember being sad when Mr. Taylor died. I mailed two huge scrapbooks to Ursula Thiess. I hope she got them. Time passed, retirement, moving to Florida. Then in 2012 my husband Fred pointed that there were two Robert Taylor movies that evening on Turner Classic Movies--"Ivanhoe" and "Quentin Durward." I watched both and it happened all over again. I started this blog both for fans and for people who didn't know about Robert Taylor. As the blog passes 200,000 views I'm delighted that so many people have come by and hope it will help preserve the legacy of this fine actor and equally good man.
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Did she mention using any Stanwyck sources?
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No, but I’m sure she is. You couldn’t portray the marriage without doing that. Thanks for writing.
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have you seen the list its difficult finding your way around her web page
i wondered how they were?
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Sorry who they were?
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I’m afraid I haven’t looked.
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oh its Bogart and Bacall also Taylor and Stanwyck and Elizabeth Taylor and Burton and so on.
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Right.
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Well at least when the usual suspects have been talked about Taylor and Stanwyck could be interesting dont you think?
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Yes, I do. There is so little consensus on the subject. I had a forum on this blog about the topic. You might want to take a look. Judith
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It seems to me (you might agree) that the views on the marriage fall along “party lines,” so to speak. It’s overgeneralizing but those who are bigger fans of Stanwyck tend to see the relationship in a different way than those who are bigger fans of Taylor and vice versa. The forum you mentioned demonstrated this somewhat. I shouldn’t speak for anyone else but I would imagine that Taylor fans don’t like for his marriage to Stanwyck to be referred to as a great romance. Some Stanwyck fans grow weary of this as well but unfortunately it’s hard to deny that he was her greatest love.
Sorry for blathering. 🙂
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You’re not blathering. I think the 2 of them went into the marriage with very different expectations. Ms. Stanwyck seems to have been heavily emotionally involved and Mr. Taylor may have seen it as just something more he needed to do for his career. Someone who knew Mr. Taylor told me that he considered his word his bond and would not have cheated as he obviously did if he had taken the marriage seriously. I would love to see the French documentary. Maybe it will be available online. Thanks for writing.
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If that really is the case (that he didn’t care about the marriage), it’s rather sad that Stanwyck was deceived that way because it was obvious that she cared. In an interview near the end of her life, she said even though she was known as an independent woman, she worked on the marriage because she “wanted it.” I guess there’s more to it but, just from that information, the story doesn’t fit in with Taylor’s image as an “honorable” man.
It would be nice to see the documentary, but in the end, it doesn’t matter much for the serious fans of either Stanwyck and Taylor because we mostly have our minds made up about what happened and who/what was at fault. Certainly my mind is made up, anyway.
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Robert Taylor liked women and I think he was genuinely fond of Ms. Stanwyck and did not intend to hurt her. Maybe he saw it as what we would call an “open marriage” today. He certainly approached his marriage to Ursula Thiess very differently. Of course, she kept an eye on him, going to his locations and generally looking at making him happy as her primary job. Ms. Stanwyck, of course, kept her independence as a professional and expected the marriage to bend around that. It’s too bad for all concerned that the marriage caused such hurt. I see both of them as imperfect humans caught in a tough situation. I do appreciate your views and your taking the time to write.
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The one thing that is not often discussed about Barbara Stanwyck was her inability to bear children because of an earlier botched abortion she had when I believe she was still in her teen years. Whether Bob ever knew that about her before they were married, I don’t know. But he certainly did want a family of his own and Terry Taylor was born in June, 1955 less than a year after Bob and Ursula Theiss were married in 1954. Tessa Taylor then came along in August 1959 and at least during the years 1962 to 1969 when I worked at the ranch Bob was completely devoted to his family and they often went on vacation together to a ranch they had the use of in Wyoming. And throughout those 7 years when I worked there Bob never once spoke of his ex wife Barbara Stanwyck.
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Mr. Taylor was never happier than when he was his family. They fulfilled him. Thanks for your input–it’s very valuable.
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Would you mind if I put all of your comments together as a single post? You have such great insights into the Taylors. A photo of you would be nice, too. Thanks so much for your input. Judith
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You may do what you wish with all of my posts but I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten how to post photographs on here. I do have a small composite of myself that spans more than 45 years, from 1966 to 2011 and guess what? I don’t think I’ve changed one single bit, except maybe for the mustache. 😉
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I forgot to mention in my narrative that Ursula Theiss also had two children by a previous marriage. Michael who lived by himself was a very troubled young man, and Manuella who was younger also lived on the ranch and had her own separate small apartment next to the ranch foreman’s cottage. Bob was more than willing to treat Ursula’s children as “his own” but by mutual agreement they were never “legally adopted” by him ~ there was no need to. As far as I’m concerned, Robert Taylor was indeed one of the most “honorable” and friendliest of people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
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Your earlier picture reminds me so much of an actor of that day. I think his name was Nick Adams–a very good looking guy. Judith
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