Robert Taylor Movies

Robert Taylor in 1951's Quo Vadis

Robert Taylor in 1951’s Quo Vadis

Want to know the best Robert Taylor movies?  How about the worst Robert Taylor movies?  Curious about Robert Taylor’s box office grosses or which Robert Taylor movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Robert Taylor movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Robert Taylor (1911-1969) was an American film and television actor who was one of the most popular leading men of his time. His IMDb page shows 79 acting credits from 1934 to 1969. This page will rank 68 Robert Taylor movies.  Movies will be ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters in North America were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part of the page:  Recently Marcel G. sent us a wonderful comment, saying….(1) he had been coming to our website for years (2) how amazing our website was and (3) that it was lacking a Robert Taylor page.  So after reading his comment….we did a quick check on Mr. Taylor’s career and realized that we not only had domestic box office numbers (thank you MGM) on most of his movies….but also we had worldwide box office numbers on 60 of his movies.  Amazingly we were able to put together, write and publish this page in less than 90 minutes.  For comparison…please know we spent almost two months working (because Paramount kept horrible records) on our Bing Crosby page.  So Marcel….here is your requested Robert Taylor page.

Robert Taylor and Irene Dunne in 1935's Magnificent Obsession

Robert Taylor and Irene Dunne in 1935’s Magnificent Obsession

Robert Taylor Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Robert Taylor Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Robert Taylor movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Robert Taylor movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Robert Taylor movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Robert Taylor movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Robert Taylor movie received.
  • Sort Robert Taylor movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Robert Taylor Table

  1. Thirty-two Robert Taylor movie crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 47.06% of his movies listed. Quo Vadis (1951) was his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Robert Taylor movie grosses $106.000 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  36 of Robert Taylor’s movies are rated as good movies…or 52.94% of his movies.  Camille (1936) was his highest rated movie while Valley Of The Kings (1954) was his lowest rated movie.
  4. Fifteen Robert Taylor movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 22.05% of his movies.
  5. Two Robert Taylor movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 2.94% of his movies.
  6. An good Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00.  44 Robert Taylor movie scored higher that average….or 64.70% of his movies. Quo Vadis (1951) got the the highest UMR Score while Savage Pampas (1966) got the lowest UMR Score.
Ava Gardner & Robert Taylor in 1953's Knights of the Round Table

Ava Gardner & Robert Taylor in 1953’s Knights of the Round Table

Possibly Interesting Facts About Robert Taylor

1.Spangler Arlington Brugh was born in Filley, Nebraska in 1911.  After signing a 7 year contract with MGM…they give him Robert Taylor as his screen name.

2. Robert Taylor was a track star and played the cello in his high school orchestra.  Taylor moved to California and enrolled at Pomona College.  In 1932 he was spotted by a MGM scout while appearing in a play at Pomona.  By 1935 he was a movie star.

3. During World War II, Robert Taylor was a flying instructor in the U.S. Naval Air Corps.  He also directed 17 United States Navy training films during World War II.

4. Robert Taylor and Clark Gable were great friends. Taylor was one of the pallbearers at Gable’s funeral in November 1960.

5. Robert Taylor never received a Oscar® or Golden Globe nomination during his entire career.

6. Robert Taylor’s favorite movie he starred in was 1940’s Waterloo Bridge….with 1936’s Camille being his second favorite.  Greta Garbo was his favorite co-star.

7. Robert Taylor’s nicknames included: The Man with the Perfect Profile”, Arly, Bob and The New King.  He was called the New King when Clark Gable left MGM in 1953.

8.  Robert Taylor was married two times. His first marriage was to actress Barbara Stanwyck.  They were married from 1939 to 1951.  His second marriage was to actress Ursula Thiess from 1954 to his death in 1969.  They had two children.

9. Robert Taylor owned a house in Mandeville Canyon, in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.  That in itself is not so interesting…however the house known as the Robert Taylor Ranch is a 34-room home situated on 112 acres.  At one point it was on sell for only $45 million!

10.  Check out Robert Taylor‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.  His 30 $100 Million Dollar Movies is one of the best totals of all-time.

Steve’s Robert Taylor You Tube Video

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76 thoughts on “Robert Taylor Movies

  1. Perhaps not the world’s greatest actor but his screen presence was beyond compelling. As a woman, I can not take my eyes off of him in any film. His voice was also amazing. Although never mentioned, he had a great sense of comedic timing and always appeared very relaxed on screen. I am now watching his movies in retrospect and find It so sad that his life was cut short by smoking. Robert Taylor remains irreplaceable.

  2. My personal viewpoint is that whilst Robert didn’t have a wide acting range he had nevertheless massive star quality and I always found him solidly entertaining. For me growing up in the 1950s queuing up to see him was like waiting to get inside to see a familiar friend; and he DID have his own particular stocks in trade-

    (1) as a young actor he was exceptionally good looking and set feminine hearts fluttering for years.

    (2) he was a SURVIVOR because 20 years after his debut and when his youthful appeal had gone he was still churning out blockbuster smash hits like Ivanhoe/Quo Vadis/Knights of the Round Table alongside entertaining routine actioners like All the Brothers Were Valiant and Valley of the Kings. ***

    The public don’t keep a performer up there thru numerous decades if he doesn’t have continuing strong appeal; and the hard-nosed studios of those days didn’t “suffer fools gladly” – and as it was by the mid-1950s MGM were still retaining Robert’s services and he was in fact their longest- serving contract star.

    Indeed in that respect the 1983 Razzies book and I for once agree because after getting the knife in via the opening paragraph it closes with an uncharacteristically kind accolade-

    “If Taylor had not died in 1969 of cancer he would have gone on working in major roles. Louis B Mayer once said of John Wayne “He has an endless face and he can go on forever.” The same can be said of Taylor.” [Robert of course has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.]

    ***In the 1951-54 period alone those 5 movies earned a Cogerson inflation- adjusted worldwide gross of around $2.3 billion which is an average per movie not far short of Half a billion dollars – great for those days when the foreign markets were usually not nearly as lucrative as they are today. In Robert’s case though his overseas grosses often match his American one according to a snapshot of Bruce’s comprehensive tables.

  3. HI BRUCE: Obviously when referring to Taylor’s Golden Globes deficit you mean that he had received no noms/awards for ACTING performances. The GG that he did get was for popularity of course.

    This site does though ideally convey a performer’s popularity via listing comprehensively his/her box office grosses and in that respect Cogerson does do Robert proudly by quoting for him for example a whopping adjusted domestic gross of nearly $7.5 billion thus putting him up there with the Big Boys in terms of box office achievement.

    I did have to smile though when David Stark mention Robert and Golden Globes because whilst Taylor would probably have liked an Oscar/GG as much as the next thespian all I have ever known Robert to complain about was [you will no doubt recall] that he was beaten by my Jimmy for the Cowboy of The [20th] Century Award.

    However it might well have annoyed Robert more than not getting an Oscar or Golden Globe or even the Cowboy of the Century award if he had read what was said about him in this site’s own 1983 book of Razzie Awards

    “Robert Taylor was handsome and competent but seldom exciting. Occasionally he gave a fine performance but his ability even in a superior picture was limited.”

    I don’t wish to pull the “Old Soldier” act and don’t know how long David’s been following this site [and if he’s a relative newcomer it’s great that he can join us and it’s good to have the opportiunity to welcome him] but if he IS a newcomer he will soon learn that the source that I have just quoted cuts more ice on this site than even the Academy Awards.

  4. You say no Golden Globe nomination for Robert Taylor but he was voted World Favorite film star (male) in a tie with Alan Ladd in 1954 at that years GG awards as the Henrietta Award.
    Keep up the good work
    David Stark

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