Dub Taylor


Walter Clarence "'Dub" Taylor Jr.' was an American character actor who from the 1940s into the 1990s worked extensively in films and on television, often in Westerns but also in comedies. He is the father of actor and painter Buck Taylor.

Early life

Taylor was born February 26, 1907, in Richmond, Virginia, the middle child of five children of Minnie and Walter C. Taylor Sr. According to the federal census of 1920, he had two older sisters, Minnie Marg and Maud; a younger brother named George; and a little sister, Edna Fay. The family moved to Augusta, Georgia, around 1912, when Walter was five years old, and lived there until he was 13. Taylor's mother was a Pennsylvania native; and his father, who worked in Augusta at that time as a cotton broker, was from North Carolina. While in Georgia as a boy, Walter Jr. got his lifelong nickname when his friends began calling him "W", then shortened it further to "Dub".

Career

Film

A vaudeville performer, Taylor made his film debut in 1938 as the cheerful ex-football captain Ed Carmichael in Frank Capra's You [Can't Take It With You (film)|You Can't Take It with You], released by Columbia Pictures. He secured the part because the role required an actor who could play tuned percussion. During the 1950s and early 1960s, he used his xylophone skills on several television shows, including the syndicated series Ranch Party.

Cannonball

Columbia kept Taylor under contract -- Capra used him again in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Columbia assigned him to play comic sidekicks in the studio's westerns. In the 1939 film Taming of the West he originated the character of Cannonball, a role he played for the next 10 years in more than 50 films. Cannonball played sidekick to Wild Bill Elliott in 13 features, then Russell Hayden in eight, and finally Charles Starrett in 15. Starrett was the studio's leading cowboy star and wanted to work with Dub Taylor indefinitely, but in 1945 Columbia replaced Taylor with Smiley Burnette. Burnette had just left Republic Pictures, and Columbia executives felt that Burnette's established name value would benefit the Starrett series. "I hated to see Dub go," recalled Starrett. "He was a good musician as well as a good actor. I begged studio bosses to keep him but they said, 'They're a dime a dozen.'"
In 1948 Taylor signed with Monogram Pictures to resume the Cannonball role opposite Monogram's newest cowboy star, Jimmy Wakely. Taylor later dropped the Cannonball name because he felt it held him back from roles in films with larger budgets.

Character actor

The 1954 film Dragnet had Taylor in the uncredited role of gangster Miller Starkie, who is killed in the opening scene. He also had bits in two major features of 1954, A Star Is Born and Them!. He had a small role in the 1958 Walt Disney film Tonka as a rustler of stray horses for sale. The same year, he performed in No Time for Sergeants as the representative of the draft board who summoned Will Stockdale from his rural home in Georgia to the United States Air Force.
He later joined Sam Peckinpah's stock company in 1965's Major Dundee, playing a professional horse thief. He also appeared in The Wild Bunch as a minister who gets his flock shot in the film's opening scene; in Junior Bonner, The Getaway, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as an aging, eccentric outlaw friend of Billy's; and in Michael Cimino's crime film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, He also played Ivan Moss, father of Michael J. Pollard's character C. W. Moss, in Bonnie and Clyde ''.
He portrayed an ill-tempered chuckwagon cook in the 1969 film The Undefeated, starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson, and appeared in Support Your Local Gunfighter as the drunken Doc Shultz.
He appeared in Back to the Future Part III with veteran Western actors Pat Buttram and Harry Carey Jr. Taylor's last film role was in Maverick'', and although he had only a fleeting appearance as an unnamed "Room Clerk", his name appears in the film's opening credits.

Television

In the 1950s, he guest-starred three times on the syndicated series The Range Rider, starring Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones. He appeared in the 1955 episode "The Outlander" of Cheyenne, and on the syndicated series Death Valley Days playing the Colorado silver miner "Chicken Bill" Lovell.
In 1957, Taylor was cast alongside Alan Hale, Jr., in the syndicated Casey Jones TV series. In 1960, he portrayed the lovable cantankerous Smudge in Laramie's "No Second Chance." He played in the 1961 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Grumbling Grandfather". Taylor was on The Lloyd Bridges Show, in the episodes "My Child Is Yet a Stranger" and "The Tyrees of Capital Hill". He was in The [Andy Griffith Show], first as the preacher who marries Charlene Darling to Dud Wash, then as postmaster Talbert, and next as the brother-in-law of town handyman Emmett Clark.
Taylor performed on other sitcoms, including Hazel with Shirley Booth. His character, Mitch Brady, was owner of a local cab company and a frequent boyfriend of Hazel's. He was cast in an episode of I Love Lucy, and on The Brian Keith Show, and in a fourth-season episode of The Cosby Show. He was on NBC's series Laredo and The High Chaparral.
Taylor played Houston Lamb in four episodes of Little House On The Prairie in seasons six and seven. He appeared on Hee Haw for six seasons, from 1985 to 1991, where he was mostly seen as a regular in the Lulu's Truck Stop skit featuring Lulu Roman and Gailard Sartain. Taylor was in several episodes of Designing Women as a rustic enamored with the women from Sugarbaker's during a camping expedition.
Starting in the late 1970s, Taylor appeared in a series of Western-style commercials for Hubba Bubba bubble gum. In the radio versions of the commercials, his character was named "The Geezer".
In 1994, he appeared in a commercial for Pace Foods, performing as one of four participants in a fair's "Dip-Off" contest, where two other competitors and he use their "secret ingredient" of Pace Picante Sauce in their dips. When the fourth participant holds up a jar of "Mexican sauce" as a "secret ingredient", Taylor's character proclaims that it was "made in New York City!"

Death

Taylor died of a heart attack on October 3, 1994, in Los Angeles. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered near Westlake Village, California.

Partial filmography

Directed by Frank Capra

Westerns starring Bill Elliott

Westerns starring Russell Hayden

Westerns starring Charles Starrett

Westerns starring Jimmy Wakely

As character actor

Television