Grant Taylor (actor)

Taylor appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and in Calamity the Cow (with Phil Collins).

He appeared in a production of Twelve Angry Men on the West End and had a regular role in the TV series Weaver's Green (1966) He was a Scots border chieftain in the BBC's 1968 colour costume drama The Borderers.

Returning to the United Kingdom in early 1963, 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 (where Taylor had a regular part) to The Avengers, The Troubleshooters and several Lew Grade-backed projects including The Champions. He also appeared in a British TV adaptation of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1964).

Taylor made his live TV debut in Funnel Web (1962) for the ABC, playing a murderer. The Sydney Morning Herald called his performance "easy-limbed, masterful". He had good roles in the TV plays Jenny (1962), Flowering Cherry (1963), The Right Thing (1964), and The One That Got Away (1964). In 1964 he appeared in the ABC-TV children's adventure serial The Stranger, Australia's first locally produced science fiction TV series, which was also sold to the BBC. He was in an episode of Adventure Unlimited.

Taylor had several roles in Whiplash (1960–61). He then focused on theatre, touring the country in Two for the Seesaw (one review called him "an actor of considerable strength and presence"), The Pleasure of His Company (1960), Bye Bye Birdie (1961), and Woman in a Dressing Gown (1962–63). In April 1963, John McCallum, head of JC Williamsons, said Taylor was one of three Australian actors who could "hold an audience in a starring part" in Australian theatre (the others were Kevin Colson and Jill Perryman).

In 1959 Taylor appeared in a brief role in Stanley Kramer's On the Beach. He played a mystery man in Smiley Gets a Gun (1958), and a policeman in The Siege of Pinchgut (1959). He was kicked in the head filming a brawl while making Smiley Gets a Gun and had to take off a number of days. He toured with a production of Fire on the Wind.

Jean and Taylor raised Kit, who became an actor, appearing with his father in Long John Silver. Jean was fatally injured in an accident at their Potts Point home after she fell over on her way back from a party on 23 April 1956. She was taken to hospital and died five days later of bronchial pneumonia, aged 39.

Taylor was cast in a support role in a Hollywood film shot in Fiji, His Majesty O'Keefe (1954). The director, Byron Haskin, liked Taylor's performance and used him again as a pirate in Long John Silver, and its television spinoff, The Adventures of Long John Silver. His son Kit played Jim Hawkins. In 1954 he said his main hobbies were "a book and a bottle."

Taylor was in two big stage hits, Dial M for Murder and Teahouse of the August Moon. In the late 1950s he appeared in several productions for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, including The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day.

He was a sergeant in Eureka Stockade (1949) – Rafferty had the leading role – and played a thug in The Kangaroo Kid (1950). He took part in the 1951 re-enactment of Sir Charles Sturt's journey down the Murrimbidgee River, playing Sturt – a film of this was made, called Inland with Sturt (1951). He had a role in another short, Far West Story (1952) then returned to lead roles when he played the title part in Captain Thunderbolt (1953). His co star in that film was Charles Tingwell who said "Grant was a tough man, yet he was very gentle. He was not one to get close to people, but he was loved by most in the acting profession."

However he remained busy as a character actor, and in radio and theatre. A review of a performance he gave in The Paragon in 1948 called him "a virile figure in the Clark Gable tradition, but is over-inclined to inflate his chest and growl menacingly through his teeth, a picturesque characteristic, but one which does not always lend itself to clarity of enunciation."

In 1947 Taylor remarried a woman called Jean Ebsworth Bullen (née Hosking). It was later revealed that Jean and Taylor had an affair while she was married to her first husband, Walter Bullen; Jean and Bullen divorced in 1945.

Taylor was discharged on 26 February 1946 as a private in the 2/3 Tank Attack Regiment.

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. His final film made during his army service was Australia Is Like This (1945). He appeared in A Soldier for Christmas at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross.

In April 1941 Taylor reportedly relocated from Sydney to his home in Melbourne, where it was announced he would focus on radio work. Taylor enlisted in the Australian army on 7 October 1942 at East Prahran. During the war he served as a military policeman, in the Army Amenities Unit based in Sydney and in the Australian Army Entertainment Unit alongside Smoky Dawson. Part of his duties involved visiting the troops and touring the islands. He served in New Guinea and Borneo.

Taylor was given leave to appear in some propaganda shorts, such as While There is Still Time (1942), 100,000 Cobbers (1942), Another Threshold (1942) and South West Pacific (1943). He was allowed to appear in the feature The Rats of Tobruk (1944), which reunited him with Chauvel and Chips Rafferty.

In June 1941 Taylor married Margaret Josephine Haslett at St Joseph's Church, Malvern. (They were engaged in May.) Shortly afterwards her mother in law moved in with them. They had one child, Christopher John (later known as Kit) born in April 1942. Taylor went to Sydney in early 1942 to make a recruiting film and says when he returned his wife had moved out. He did not see her again until 1945, when she said she had no intention to return to him. Taylor was granted a divorce in 1946 with custody of their child going to Margaret. Margaret Taylor died in 1952.

Taylor's physique, good looks and charm saw Ken G. Hall cast him as the juvenile lead in Dad Rudd, MP (1940) opposite Yvonne East. The Sydney Truth later wrote:

Taylor was then selected by Charles Chauvel to play the lead role of 'Red' Gallagher in the war film Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940). Chauvel had cast Errol Flynn in his first lead role. His wife Elsa described Taylor as like "a big kid" on the set. Charles Chauvel said "I consider Grant Taylor by far the best screen lead here." Taylor was paid £15 a week.

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. However, according to one historian, his "radio career advance rapidly, particularly in Sydney where he not only turned in some memorable performances but earned himself a reputation as one of th ewild and colourful characters of the 1940s and 50s."

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.

Ronald Grant Taylor (6 December 1917 – 1971) was an English-Australian 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).