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, 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

  • You Can't Take It with You as Ed Carmichael
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as Reporter

    Westerns starring Bill Elliott

  • The Taming of the West as Cannonball
  • The Return of Wild Bill as Cannonball
  • Prairie Schooners as Cannonball
  • The Wildcat of Tucson as Cannonball
  • The Return of Daniel Boone as Cannonball
  • Hands Across the Rockies as Cannonball Taylor
  • The Son of Davy Crockett as Cannonball

    Westerns starring Russell Hayden

  • The Lone Prairie as Cannonball
  • Riders of the Northwest Mounted as Cannonball
  • Saddles and Sagebrush as Cannonball
  • The Last Horseman as Cannonball

    Westerns starring Charles Starrett

  • Cowboy in the Clouds as Cannonball
  • Saddle Leather Law as Cannonball
  • Cowboy Canteen as Cannonball
  • Cyclone Prairie Rangers as Cannonball
  • Both Barrels Blazing as Cannonball
  • Rustlers of the Badlands as Cannonball

    Westerns starring Jimmy Wakely

  • Courtin' Trouble as Cannonball
  • Cowboy Cavalier as Cannonball
  • Song of the Drifter as Cannonball
  • Silver Trails as Cannonball
  • Across the Rio Grande as Cannonball Taylor
  • Brand of Fear as Cannonball

    As character actor

  • Tanks a Million as Malloy
  • What's Buzzin', Cousin? as Jed
  • Minesweeper as Seaman Stubby Gordon
  • Riding High as Joe
  • Lure of the Wilderness as Sheriff Jepson
  • The Story of Will Rogers as Actor
  • Woman of the North Country as Bob
  • The Charge at Feather River as Danowicz
  • Those Redheads from Seattle as Townsman
  • Crime Wave as Gus Snider
  • Riding Shotgun as Eddie
  • Them! as Railroad Yard Watchman
  • Dragnet as Miller Starkie
  • The Bounty Hunter as Eli Danvers
  • A Star Is Born as Norman's Driver
  • Tall Man Riding as Townsman
  • The McConnell Story as Angry Technical Sergeant
  • I Died a Thousand Times as Ed
  • The Fastest Gun Alive as Nolan Brown
  • Tension at Table Rock as Ruffian
  • You Can't Run Away from It as Joe
  • No Time for Sergeants as McKinney
  • Hot Rod Gang as Al Berrywhiff
  • Street of Darkness as Duffy Tyler
  • Auntie Mame as County Veterinarian
  • A Hole in the Head as Fred
  • Home from the Hill as Bob Skaggs
  • Parrish as Teet Howie
  • Sweet Bird of Youth as Dan Hatcher
  • Black Gold as Doc
  • Spencer's Mountain as Percy Cook
  • Major Dundee as Priam
  • The Hallelujah Trail as Clayton Howell
  • The Cincinnati Kid as First Dealer
  • The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin as Timekeeper
  • Don't Make Waves as Electrician
  • Bonnie and Clyde as Ivan Moss
  • Johnny Banco
  • The Money Jungle as Pete Jensen
  • Bandolero! as Attendant
  • The Shakiest Gun in the West as Pop McGovern
  • Death of a Gunfighter as Doc Adams
  • The Wild Bunch as Wainscoat
  • The Learning Tree as Spikey
  • The Undefeated as McCartney
  • The Reivers as Dr. B.F. Peabody
  • ...tick...tick...tick... as Junior
  • The Liberation of L.B. Jones as Mayor
  • A Man Called Horse as Joe
  • The Wild Country as Phil
  • Support Your Local Gunfighter as Doc Schultz
  • Man and Boy as Atkins
  • Evel Knievel as Turquoise Smith
  • Wild in the Sky as Officer Roddenberry
  • Junior Bonner as Del
  • The Getaway as Laughlin
  • Country Blue as Jumpy Belk
  • Tom Sawyer as Clayton
  • Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as Josh
  • Thunderbolt and Lightfoot as Station Attendant
  • The Fortune as Rattlesnake Tom
  • Poor Pretty Eddie as Justice of the Peace Floyd
  • Hearts of the West as Nevada Ticket Agent
  • Flash and the Firecat
  • Creature from Black Lake as Grandpaw Bridges
  • Burnt Offerings as Walker
  • Treasure of Matecumbe as Sheriff Forbes
  • Pony Express Rider as Boomer Riley
  • Gator as Mayor Caffey
  • The Winds of Autumn as Rattler S. Gravley
  • The Great Smokey Roadblock as Harley Davidson
  • Moonshine County Express as Uncle Bill
  • The Rescuers as Digger
  • Beartooth
  • They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way as Gunner
  • 1941 as Mr. Malcomb
  • Soggy Bottom U.S.A as Cottonmouth Gorch
  • Used Cars as Tucker
  • Cannonball Run II as Sheriff
  • The Best of Times as Mac
  • Once Upon a Texas Train as Charlie Lee
  • Back to the Future Part III as Levi, Saloon Old-Timer #1
  • Conagher as Station Agent
  • My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys as Gimme Cap
  • Falling from Grace as Grandpa Parks
  • Maverick as Room Clerk