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Rod Taylor was born Rodney Taylor in a suburb of Australia in 1929. He had planned to be an artist, but he saw Laurence Olivier in a stage production in Australia and that convinced him to become an actor! He moved to the U.S. in 1954 (wisely changing "Rodney" to "Rod"!), and he was far from an overnight success, doing much TV, and getting some small parts in major movies. In 1960, he got two big breaks. He was given the lead role in a TV series, Hong Kong, and was cast as George, The Time Traveler, in the wonderful movie, The Time Machine. Taylor continued in TV, until 1963, when he played the lead in Hitchcock's great The Birds, and that finally made him a movie star. He was very busy throughout the rest of the 1960s, in both romantic comedies and action movies. His career paralleled that of Sean Connery, who also had striking good looks and a great speaking voice, who also worked with Hitchcock but got an even bigger break in becoming James Bond, and Taylor likely got every single role that Connery turned down! In the 1970s he returned to a mix of movies and TV, and while he kept working in the 1980s and 1990s, his appearances became increasingly sporadic. In 2009 Quentin Tarantino talked him out of retirement to play Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds! He passed away in 2015 at the age of 84.

One final footnote. I loved The Time Machine as a kid (who wouldn't love it, with the scary Morlocks and the gorgeous young Yvette Mimieux, along with Taylor and Alan Young?), and have watched it umpteen times over the years. Yet somehow I missed that in 1993, the man who wrote the screenplay for the movie, David Duncan, wrote a brief scene, showing The Time Traveler and his best friend Filby reuniting many years later, and was able to coax both Rod Taylor and Alan Young (the original actors) to recreate their roles! This was filmed as "Time Machine: The Journey Back" and is included in a DVD release of the movie, along with a "Making of..." segment. I learned of this researching Taylor, and I ordered it, and recommend you do the same!

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Rod Taylor! The still was used at the world premiere of the movie at the Roosevelt Theatre on May 28, 1968 (that information is stamped on the back of the still (see our image).

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last all-signed auction, we auctioned nearly 500 items from this collection and now we are auctioning 162 more items!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves. As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775