Of Robert Taylor and Grandma Brady

Robert Taylor in a late Western, Return of the Gunfighter (1967)

I watch a lot of GRIT TV – the nostalgic cable channel that runs mostly old-time westerns. Although many of the films feature John Wayne, there are many other fine actors whose pictures are highlighted.

I’ve grown quite fond of many of them, including Joel McCrea, Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott. But there’s one that I’ve come to appreciate because of what he meant to a member of my family.

The actor is Robert Taylor and he was Grandma Brady’s favorite. Taylor passed away this month back in 1969. Here’s a small article that appeared in the Journal on June 7, 1969.

Taylor died the next day on June 8, 1969.

As an article that appeared in the Journal on June 12, 1969, noted, “He epitomized an era of motion pictures: a time in the 30s, 40s and 50s when all leading men were handsome. During those decades the matinee idol was at his height.

“Of them all, Bob Taylor was perhaps the most popular in Hollywood."

Well, he was popular with Grandma, that’s for sure. She even had his photo taped to her cash register at Kline’s in Downtown Lorain, where she worked for thirty years.

Grandma lived a hard life. She was only eleven when her mother died in 1909, just a couple years after the family arrived in Lorain from Europe. Her brother Ben was killed at U. S. Steel in 1937. Her husband was out of the picture by the end of the 1930s; within a few years her son (my Dad) would be in the Army and away from Lorain for three years. In later years, she took care of her ailing and bedridden stepmother without complaining.

But despite Grandma's hardships, my own mother remembers her mother-in-law as sweet, kind and generous. She was practically a saint.

Maybe that picture of Robert Taylor taped to her cash register helped Grandma cope, like a little window into a private world where she could forget about her problems for a while – and dream.