Robert Taylor George Hurrell MGM studio portrait 1934 Metal Print

"In my freshman year [1929] I played the leading role in the campus performance 'Helena's Boys', greatly to the disgust of Professor Gray [Herbert B. Gray. Taylor's cello teacher from 1925 to 1931], who wanted to know why I fiddled about with such nonsense. He said that I should concentrate on the cello, that I had the makings of a concert artist, what had I to do with 'playacting?' I couldn't tell him. I didn't know myself. I don't know now. I only know that there was something in the musty smell of backstage that I like." - Robert Taylor, 1911-1969

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...