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Rod Taylor News and Site Updates
May 27, 2013
More steady progress to report on the gallery
updates. Check out the following:
Catered
Affair // Chuka //
Darker Than Amber //
Dark of the Sun //
Do Not Disturb
Family
Flight //
Fate is the
Hunter //
Gathering
of Eagles //
Giant //
Glass
Bottom Boat
I've also started adding scans of Rod-centric items
from pressbooks of his various films. Here are the uploaded ones so far
(PDFs):
36 Hours //
Chuka //
Darker
Than Amber //
Dark of the
Sun // Do
Not Disturb
Fate is
the Hunter //
Gathering of Eagles //
Glass
Bottom Boat
I've also uploaded a
scan of an item
about Catalina Island and Glass Bottom Boat from a Rod-Lore fan
newsletter written by Marco Lopez, Rod's assistant and stand-in for many
years.
May 18, 2013
I've started re-doing the various photo galleries
related to particular TV shows and movies. Again, I'm working
alphabetically through the site. Here's my progress so far:
36 Hours
// Ask Any Girl //
Bearcats! //
The Birds
I've also updated the page of one of my most-wanted
shows -- Rod's appearance on "Bus Stop." I
want it even more after reading the description from from an Australian
Women's Weekly magazine from 1962:
-
"There is no doubt he has sex appeal, but in
case we females didn't realise it, Mr. Taylor was photographed
whenever possible stripped to the waist, in bed, wearing short
shorts and tight muscle-revealing shirts on the tennis courts, or
having revealing rub-downs in the massage rooms."
May 1, 2013
I have added another page --
John Newcombe's Australian
Stars in the States -- and would add another, but I really haven't
found enough information.
Perhaps any fans in Europe could help with this:
IMDb lists Rod as making an appearance on the German show "Gottschalk Late
Night" on Dec. 3, 1994. I haven't been able to confirm this, however.
There a several clips of Thomas Gottschalk's late night show on YouTube,
but Rod is not in any of them.
Does anyone out there have any info to shed light
on the matter? Please contact me at
completerodtaylor@gmail.com
with any leads you may have.
By the way,two items on Rod's IMDb page should not
be there:
The Rack and
Gulliver's Travels. Rod has said he never did "The Rack," and I have
watched "Gulliver's Travels" and the "uncredited" voice is not his.
One last stray credit. TV listings for April 30,
1964, had Rod making appearance on the game show "Password," but he did
not appear. Jack Jones was on in his place.
April 28, 2013
The site updates are progressing and include some new
pages. Probably by next weekend, I will start updating the galleries
with lots of new pictures and, eventually, magazine scans. Like I said on
the home page, this could take months!
Here are some of the latest highlights and
additions:
April 16, 2013
The site update has progressed through the "R"
titles. A lot of this site had been built during dial-up days, with
small images and a general lack of multimedia. So many page revisions
involve adding links to film clips, trailers and even full movies on
YouTube -- in addition to fresh screen captures and additional
information about various titles.
Here are some of the pages with notable upgrades:
March 31, 2013
I've been making steady progress on updating the
site, mostly working my way alphabetically through the various pages. (I
finished with the H's last night! )
I thought I'd point you toward some of the more
notable recent updates:
So, click around and have fun. There's still a lot
to update, including an eventual re-working of the galleries. I also am
finding I'll need to make a second pass through the site with additions
of things I missed the first time around. On the Internet, nothing is
ever "finished"!
March 2013
I happened to be over on
Veronica Cartwright's Web page,
checking links, and lo and behold -- on the front was a
photo of her, Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor taken this year at
Rod's house!
The caption says "Tippi
Hedren, Veronica and Rod Tayler do an interview for a documentary on
Rod Taylor's life -- 'Pulling No Punches: Rod Taylor' -- scheduled for
release next year."
The
documentary is being made by Lowland Media Pty Ltd, with Robert De
Young, Stephan Wellink producers and Mark Hartley, director. A synopsis
says, "Pulling No Punches profiles the career and legacy of rugged
Australian actor Rod Taylor."
Is it next year yet?!?
March 10, 2013
 As
you can see, I have begun a gradual update of the Rod Taylor Site! As
time permits, I will be revising pages, pictures and features of the
site. Please forgive any oddities along the way, such as broken links
and wonky pictures. This project will take weeks, if not months, but I
hope you will enjoy the ride -- and the result.
Some examples of updated pages include pictures for
"Cheyenne" and "Tales
of the Unexpected" and various additions and changes to the
Rod Taylor, artist page as well as "Bearcats!"
On the latter, you will see a change: I will include a "Viewer's Guide"
section on each page rather than the separate "Buyer's Guide" page that
was hard to keep updated.
And that brings me to some news for today. The box
art for the "Bearcats!" DVD release coming up on May 14th!
Feb. 18, 2013
For many years, Rod Taylor fans have been searching for five
"missing" episodes of "Hong Kong." The
series has never been released officially on VHS or DVD, and the same 21
episodes have been circulating among tape traders and on eBay.
Then, yesterday, I stumbled upon the motherlode on YouTube. The five
episodes (and other complete episodes) are online and can be viewed
here:
1.2 Murder Royal
// 1.13 When Strangers Meet
// 1.15 Lesson in Fear
1.19 Lady Godiva
// 1.20 The Hunted
Dec. 8, 2012
The Dec. 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived yesterday, bearing a
surprise: A DVD "Cult Classic" review of
Dark of the Sun, giving it an
"A" and raving about the "rollicking red-meat adventure." The item
has special praise for "terrific Rod Taylor" who "oozes sweaty,
100-proof charisma." What a joy to see this praise in a major,
mass-audience publication!
A scan of the review is below for your reading enjoyment:
Oct. 29, 2012
Canadian Derek Redmond recently shared a page related to "Hong Kong"
that he added to his website, The CJ3B Page, which deals with Jeeps of
the 1950s-60s.
The Web page --
The Gold Jeeps of 1961 and the TV series Hong Kong -- includes
discussion of the use of Jeeps in "Hong Kong,"
which was sponsored by Willys Motors and its parent company, Kaiser
Industries.
I discovered another mention of Kaiser Industries in a March 11, 1962,
column in the Torrance Herald in California. Columnist Terence
O'Flaherty noted that the series "attracted the eye of sponsor Henry
Kaiser," who was a major industrialist, shipbuilder and philanthropist.
"He and Taylor hit if off right away," O'Flaherty wrote. "They call each
other 'Dad' and 'Son.' No other actor I know enjoys this kind of
friendship with a former sponsor."
Read on for new information about the ill-fated follow-up to "Hong Kong"
-- "Dateline: San Francisco."
Oct. 27, 2012
Many thanks also go to Arthur Tashiro for sending along the following account
of the screening of "Darker Than Amber"
Oct. 22 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
The print of the movie was like new. A pleasure to look at. The print
is basically the same cut I saw at a theater back in the late 1970s. The
movie, as you know, was withdrawn from circulation for a while and
re-edited to remove its R rating. I think this is the re-edited version
-- longer than what you might see on TV but shorter than what originally
went out to theaters. The story is coherent, so I think the cuts took
out some moments of violence and perhaps nudity.
Rod does well in it. I think he's let down by the script, a little. The
emotional core of the movie ought to be his accidental but real
relationship with Suzy Kendall -- that's what motivates the story, which
otherwise has him bulling his way around Florida like any other action
hero. Both he and Kendall play their parts well, but there's something
heavy-handed and rushed about the way their scenes are constructed.
Instead of letting the audience see a connection between them grow, the
movie gives viewers a set of illustrations: now they're mad at each
other, now they're tender, now some other thing. To believe, you have to
bring a certain amount of goodwill to the show and stick with the
actors' sense of reality.
So the movie is welcome but frustrating.
I enjoyed Arthur's comments about the relationship between the
characters. Not only are they insightful, but it's refreshing to see a
review that isn't dwelling on the famous fight scene.
Oct. 12, 2012
Mark Hartley, the Australian writer/director of "Not
Quite Hollywood," was in Los Angeles in September to start work on
new documentary. The topic this time... Rod Taylor!
Deadline Hollywood reports that the documentary is tentatively
titled "Pulling No Punches," and is being produced by Robert de Young,
who wrote and produced films about Peter Finch and Errol Flynn.
In further good news, a book on the making of "The
Birds" will be published in 2013 to celebrate the film's 50th
anniversary. The author is Tony Lee Moral, who also wrote a book about
the making of "Marnie."
More info >>
March 28, 2012
Here's a link to a blog post from an Australian radio station in which
the author, Jim Schembri, praises his
top six Rod Taylor flicks. I highly recommend this snappy,
deliciously descriptive commentary.
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