Rod Taylor died today of natural causes, 3 days before his 85th birthday. He’s best known of course for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and his most recent screen appearance was in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) as Winston Churchill, but the handsome Australian born actor had a long and varied television career as well.
Between 1955 and 1960, he seemed to appear on every show with the words “Playhouse” or “Theater” or “Studio” in the title at least once: Studio 57, Lux Video Theatre (Mr. Gilbert in The Browning Version), Schlitz Playhouse, Studio One in Hollywood, Lux Playhouse, Playhouse 90 (5 times including a performance as Nick in The Great Gatsby), Zane Grey Theater, Goodyear Theatre, Alcoa Theatre, General Electric Theater, and Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. In 1955 he guest-starred on ABC’s hour-long western Cheyenne in an episode that adapted John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He also starred in 26 episodes of ABC’s 1961 one-season series Hong Kong which really helped establish him as a star.
When his movie career waned in the next decade, Taylor appeared in 14 episodes of Bearcats! (1971), 14 episodes of The Oregon Trail (1976), 13 episodes of Masquerade (1984), 12 Episodes of Outlaws (1987) and 26 episodes of the popular evening soap Falcon Crest (1988-1990) as Frank Agretti (he was credited in 4 more).
Here he is in the classic first-season Twilight Zone episode “And When the Sky Was Opened” from 1959. He plays test pilot Col. Clegg Forbes who survives the crash of an experimental spacecraft only to gradually find out he no longer seems to exist.