Grant Taylor (actor)
Grant Taylor (6 December 1917-1971), real name Ronald Grant Taylor, was an English-born actor best known as the abrasive General Henderson in the Gerry Anderson science fiction series UFO and for his lead role in Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940).
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[edit] Australian work
Taylor was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, but moved to Australia with his parents as a child. For a time he worked as a professional boxer in Melbourne under the name of Lance Matheson. Cinesound Productions were looking for someone with wrestling skills to play the part of a gorilla in Gone to the Dogs (1939), so Taylor auditioned. He did not get the part but met Alec Kellaway who persuaded him to join Cinesound's Talent School.[1]
Ken G. Hall said that one of the problems of the Australian industry of this time was they "were consistently short of trained juveniles and ingenues".[2] Cinesound in particular had a great deal of trouble finding male romantic leads. They either left to work in radio (Dick Fair), returned overseas (John Longden, Billy Rayes), left for overseas (Frank Leighton), or died (Brian Abbot). Cinesound Talent School was partly founded with an intention to rectify this.[3]
Taylor's physique, good looks and charm saw Ken G. Hall cast him in Dad Rudd, MP (1940). He was then selected by Charles Chauvel to play the lead role of 'Red' Gallagher in the war film Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940). This movie was a massive international success and a Hollywood or English career beckoned, but Taylor elected to stay in Australia. Career-wise it proved to be a bad decision, as film production in Australia declined sharply with the advent of World War II and Taylor was unable to follow up his success immediately.
Taylor enlisted in the Australian army on 7 October 1942. During the war he served as a military policeman and in the Australian Army Entertainment Unit alongside Smoky Dawson.[4] He also appeared in some propaganda shorts as well as the feature The Rats of Tobruk (1944), which reunited him with Chauvel and Chips Rafferty. In 1945, it was announced that he would star in another Chauvel film, Green Mountain, but by the time the movie was actually made in 1949 (as Sons of Matthew), he did not appear in it.[5] He was discharged on 26 February 1946.[6]
After the war Taylor was unable to consolidate his position as a film star, and saw the majority of leading man roles go instead to actors such as Charles Tingwell and Chips Rafferty. However he remained busy as a character actor, and in radio and theatre, and played the title role in Captain Thunderbolt (1953).
In 1954 Taylor co-starred as a pirate with Robert Newton in Long John Silver, and it's television spin off, The Adventures of Long John Silver. His son Kit played Jim Hawkins.
In 1959 Taylor appeared in a brief role in Stanley Kramer's On the Beach.[7] In 1964 he appeared in the ABC-TV children's adventure serial The Stranger, Australia's first locally-produced science fiction TV series,[8] which was also sold to the BBC.
[edit] UK work
Returning to the United Kingdom, Taylor worked on the long-running medical drama Emergency Ward 10. This led to plenty of work in character roles, from Anglia TV's soap opera Weavers Green and several Lew Grade-backed projects, including The Avengers, The Champions and The Troubleshooters. He was a Scots border chieftain in the BBC's 1968 colour costume drama The Borderers.
His most fondly-remembered role was in the Gerry Anderson science fiction series UFO, where he played sometime-ally, sometime-antagonist General Henderson. His last appearance in the series was in the penultimate episode 'Mindbender', where he also appears as himself, acting the role of Henderson in the studio.
On the movie side Taylor appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and opposite the kids in Calamity the Cow (with Phil Collins).
He died of cancer in 1971 aged 54.
[edit] Filmography
- Dad Rudd, MP (1940)
- Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940)
- 100,000 Cobbers (1942) - short
- The Rats of Tobruk (1944)
- Eureka Stockade (1949)
- The Kangaroo Kid (1950)
- Inland with Sturt (1951) - short
- Captain Thunderbolt (1953)
- His Majesty O'Keefe (1953)
- Long John Silver (1954)
- The Adventures of Long John Silver (1955) - TV series
- On the Beach (1959)
- Smiley Gets a Gun (1959)
- The Siege of Pinchgut (1959)
- The Stranger (1964) - TV series
- Emergency Ward 10 - TV series
- Weavers Green - TV series
- The Avengers - TV series
- The Champions - TV series
- The Troubleshooters - TV series
- The Borderers (1968) - TV series
- Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
- Calamity the Cow (1967)
- UFO (1970–71) - TV series
[edit] References
- ^ 'New Romantic Lead', Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 15 February 1940, p24
- ^ Ken G. Hall, Directed by Ken G. Hall, Lansdowne Press, 1977p 157
- ^ 'Australians Seek Fame, 200 in Starlet School' Sunday Times (Perth), Sunday 30 June 1940 p6
- ^ http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/dawson/intertext5.html
- ^ 'Questions', The Mail (Adelaide), Saturday 28 April 1945 p8
- ^ War Service Record
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/fullcredits#cast Retrieved on 1 December 2007.
- ^ IMDb - The Stranger
