June 20, 2008
Another Rod Taylor movie has been released on DVD: "The Deadly Trackers" has been paired with "The Man in the Wilderness" in a DVD offering. Thanks go to good friend and fan Darryl for his persistence in trying to inform me about it.
Which brings me to another update... I had been using diane@fanfromfla.net as the e-mail address for this site. However, it was plagued by spam, so I really gave up using it. Unfortunately a few good e-mails got lost in the shuffle! My apologies to those users of this site who had sent me kind messages there and I missed them.
The best address to use will now be fanfromfla@yahoo.com, which I use constantly (and has a better spam filter!)
May 10, 2008
Turner Classic Movies' Web site offers fans a chance to voice their desire for particular DVD releases. Here's the page for "Dark of the Sun," with a VOTE feature in the right-hand column. I have not idea if this will have any effect whatsoever, but why not cast your vote and get this film out on DVD at last!
May 8, 2008
"The Virgin Queen" is out on DVD now, so at last I could capture a nice image of Rod to post on the page for that movie. As a bonus, also check out the video clip to see and hear Rod's scene, his striking costume and peculiar accent! Click here.
May 5, 2008
Sorry to all the friends of the Rod Taylor site for the downtime! There was a "clerical error," let's say. My Web service provider showed an expiry date of September 2008 and sent no notice that it really was April, apparently. Thanks go to Liz Ploger for alerting me to site being off-line. Rod's former fan club president is still looking out for him!
I had to renew my site hosting and re-upload the site. All should be good now, but if any part of the site is behaving in a wonky manner, please let me know at fanfromfla@yahoo.com.
March 22, 2008
More DVD news! A pair of releases from two ends of Rod's career:
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Rod's very brief appearance in 1955's The Virgin Queen will be out on DVD on April 8. (Amazon.com link).
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His first two guest-starring appearances on Walker, Texas Ranger are out on DVD, too. Season 4, Disc 2 has "Redemption," and Season 4, Disc 7 has "Texas v. Cahill." (A bit of confusion arises here because the episode guide for the show has these episodes listed as being in Season 5, but on DVD, they are Season 4.) (Amazon.com link)
March 2, 2008
Look for a two-disc platinum edition DVD release of 101 Dalmatians on March 4. The film has undergone restoration and there's a ton of extras, including some deleted scenes and songs. Let's hope some of those song feature the voice of Pongo!
January 14, 2008
The audiobook that Rod Taylor recorded in 2005 has been re-named "Rock Star Rising." The author, Paul Kyriazi, announced the change last month, saying that the title and cover is higher class and the actors' names are easier to read and Rod's name is larger on top of the title. The audiobook originally was titled "Hard Rock Lovers." The new title definitely reflects the story much better! Thanks and good luck to Mr. Kyriazi.
January 11, 2008
Happy 78th birthday to Rod Taylor!
September 15, 2007
Thanks to a reminder from a fan in Hawaii, I decided simply to scan the 1998 article from Hello! magazine (see May 17 entry below) rather than try to transcribe and highlight it. Frankly, the whole article is a highlight! Sorry it's taken so long. Click here for PDF.
September 5, 2007
Mark your Rod Taylor calendars: KAW will be released on DVD on Oct. 23. (Amazon.com listing). Thanks go to eagle-eyed Darryl in South Carolina who spotted the news on the release! :)
May 17, 2007
This tour of Rod's home is brought to you courtesy of some recent eBay acquisitions: (1) A set of photos from the 1970s and (2) a Hello! magazine article from 1998.
This first batch of photos features Rod and wife Carol in various rooms of their Beverly Hills home (where Rod has lived since the early 1960s). The artwork on the walls, much of the wood carving and the painted window over the chess set were all done by Rod himself.
Chess // Kitchen // Dining room // Billiards
This second batch of photos again features Rod and Carol, but a couple of decades later.
Outside // Staircase // Kitchen table
I have sat at that kitchen table myself! Rod made it himself (as well as the pottery plates that hang above it). The carving on the table reads: "Chicken, mash, tatties and pease and goode wine our tummies to please."
I'll include more information from the Hello! magazine interview in my next update.
April 16, 2007
A site called Home Theater Forum archived a couple of live chat sessions with Warner Home Video representative, and the conversations reveal that at least "Dark of the Sun" is on the company's radar screen for DVD release.
In a live chat
Feb. 1, 2006, Warner reps were asked if there were any plans for a release of "Dark of the Sun." They replied,
"Dark of the Sun is a likely choice, probably for 2007."
It doesn't sound as though much progress was made in the ensuing year,
however. During a live chat on Feb. 26, 2007, Warner reps were asked about
"Dark of the Sun" again, and merely replied, "We are discussing Dark of the Sun."
Someone posted in July 2006 at the IMDb message board for "Dark of the Sun" that Warner has the rights to the film and is working on cleaning the original negative for a DVD release.
April 8, 2007
It was great seeing Rod in something new! "KAW" premiered on SciFi channel last night. I'll have some more commentary and maybe a video clip or two later on, but first...
Here are some screen captures from Rod's role in KAW:
At the first crime scene // Closeup
Questioning // Birds-esque lineup
Rod's picture is on the wall! -- it's this one, from "The Glass Bottom Boat"
April 2, 2007
Let the
countdown begin.... NEW Rod Taylor this weekend!
According to various schedules, "KAW" airs on SciFi channel in the U.S. at 9 p.m. Saturday, April 7 and 1 a.m. on Sunday, April 8. It is scheduled to air again on Thursday, April 12 at 9 p.m. (All times are U.S. Eastern Time).
(The 9 a.m. airing on Saturday apparently was a mistake in SciFi's schedule)
March 10, 2007
A pair of old books have brought some new tidbits about "Young Cassidy" and other Rod Taylor films to light.
A friend found "Magic Hour," Jack Cardiff's autobiography, in a London bookshop and kindly shared it with me. Cardiff directed Rod Taylor in three films -- "Young Cassidy," "The Liquidator," and "Dark of the Sun," and we're both disappointed to find that Cardiff doesn't write more at length about Rod.
But Cardiff certainly did consider Rod a friend and a top-rate actor. In "Magic Hour," here's how Cardiff describes getting the call to take over "Young Cassidy" after director John Ford had fallen ill:
I was urgently summoned to Ireland to take over the film -- a daunting task, not having even read the script, nor met the glittering cast, which included Rod Taylor, Julie Christie, Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave, Maggie Smith and Flora Robson. It turned out to be a most creatively satisfactory experience. It was a joy to work with such a fine cast and a great script.
One "critic" who had praise for the "Young Cassidy" was Martin Scorsese -- he of the brand-new Academy Award for best director. Scorsese wrote in the foreword to Cardiff's 1996 autobiography: "Young Cassidy had a true sense of empathy for Sean O'Casey and offers us a view of one of the great Irish artists as well as a vivid depiction of the world in which he lived."
Scorsese goes on to tout another Cardiff/Taylor collaboration: "Another startling film is the little-known and little-seen Dark of the Sun, which surprised me with its unexpected ferocity the first time I saw it back in 1968 in London's Leicester Square."
(In a later writing, Scorsese listed "Dark of the Sun" among the
movies he considers his "guilty pleasures.")
Another book, titled "The Unkindest Cuts," also mentions "Young Cassidy." The
1972 book was written by Doug McClelland, a former newspaper and magazine editor and author of 11 books. In "The Unkindest Cuts," McClelland chronicles scenes left on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, he doesn't tackle what might have been left out of "Dark of the Sun," but he does have this to say about "Young Cassidy":
Dame Flora Robson had her role as the poverty-stricken mother of the young Sean O'Casey ... slightly snipped. In this brawling, sentimental look at Irish life at the time of the Trouble, Miss Robson died half-way through and was seen in the bed only when her son (Rod Taylor) discovered her there, dead. There is a still showing her sitting up in bed, hardly ready for a jig but very much able to enjoy a kiss on the forehead from her doting son, a scene cut from the release print.
Here's that still photo to which he refers and included in his book:
Elsewhere in his book, McClelland hails Rod Taylor -- overall and in relation to his part in "36 Hours":
Rod Taylor -- who has just the right manly charm, personality and twinkle in a romantic clinch, the only actor yet developed by Hollywood who could possibly inherit the Gable crown -- was the Americanized German doctor in charge of the bogus U.S. hospital in which [James] Garner awoke and Eva Marie Saint, with a German accent that came and went (mostly went), was the concentration camp refugee forced to feign marriage to the American. Only Taylor gave a performance, though (both Garner and Saint were completely without the Errol Flynn flair needed to carry off this hokum).
One final "Young Cassidy" mention -- I made a video clip of my favorite scene from the movie (possibly from ALL of Rod's movies!). Click here for a minute-long Windows Media Player clip of Rod singing lovingly to Maggie Smith.
Feb. 9, 2007
"Do Not Disturb" -- which never was officially released on VHS -- debuted on DVD on Jan. 30. The disc doesn't have many Rod-related "extras" among its special features. The only bonus materials that feature Rod are some stills in the DVD's photo galleries. Here are the best of them:
Behind the scenes:
In
his pajamas // With
Doris between scenes // A
merry pair
Portraits:
Serious
in a suit // Handsome
in green velour // Dashing
in red cardigan
Rod in the garden // Rod in the reeds
Site update highlights from 2005-06
Aug. 11, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I was thrilled to find that Rod Taylor was included in a book published in 2005 called "Australian Legends," by Richard Simpkin. The "author" had started out by photographing legendary Australians for a photo exhibition, and the project turned into a book.
I found the photo he took of Rod (click here and scroll down) and was charmed by Simpkin's account of meeting him. I managed to get a copy of the book and was excited when it arrived in the mail today.
I am now somewhere between flattered and outraged. Let me just say, if you want to read Simpkin's piece about Rod Taylor, save your money and just visit the biography pages of this Web site.
The book does have a nice full-page version of Simpkin's photograph of Rod. But the page of biography that accompanies it is merely a summary (some of it word-for-word) from this Web site. The quotes from Rod are not from interviews he conducted, but from the items included here. And, unlike the book, my source materials are fully attributed and referenced.
Nov. 21, 2005
A
kind reader of this Web site sent along a glimpse of Rod at 16 (at right),
when he was a member of the Lidcombe Congregational Gymnasium Club.
Click here for the group photo, which was taken in 1946. The club was divided into three groups - Juniors under 12 years old, Intermediates from 12 years to 15 years old, and Seniors 16 years and over. The club, in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, was run by Les Wilson and folded about two years after this photo was taken, when Mr. Wilson suffered a fatal heart attack.
Oct. 10, 2005
During a vacation in California last week, I finally had the good fortune to meet Our Hero!
On Oct. 5, Rod graciously invited my husband and I to his house and then out for a wonderful lunch. It was a private visit, so I'll simply pass along that Rod was as charming and full of good humor as you can imagine. He appreciates his true fans and is glad to know people have enjoyed his work.
August 27, 2005
Here's some info about Rod Taylor that cropped up in a recent batch of newspaper clippings: Rod had hip-replacement surgery in 1997, according to an article from the "Globe." The article says Rod's hip had been bothering him for some time, but the pain became unbearable after he was in Australia working on "Welcome to Woop Woop."
"I finally busted out my hip after years of stupidity and punishment, but now I've got a new one," Rod was quoted as saying. After he got back on his feet, Rod went to work on an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger."
"He did so well on his first guest appearance that they want him back soon," Rod's spokesman, Tom Korman, said at the time.
May 26, 2005
The June
2005 issue of the British GQ magazine just arrived (thanks, eBay)! It has a package about
"Old
Hollywood" male movie stars that includes two photos of Rod:
There's
a full-page b/w picture of Rod and
one of him with Robert Wagner and Tab Hunter.
The idea behind the 18-page photo feature (by photographer Peter Lindbergh) is to capture the "style, grace and gravitas of Hollywood itself." Other subjects include Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Christopher Lee, Omar Sharif and Mickey Rooney.
The brief article that accompanies the photos indicates that Rod's photos were taken on the lot at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.