The Virgin Queen (1955)
Rod Taylor has an uncredited bit part as Corporal Gwylim in this film
featuring Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth I and Richard Todd as Sir Walter
Raleigh.
Taylor has about two minutes of screen time in this -- his first role in a
Hollywood feature film -- as he delivers
a message to Raleigh in an almost incomprehensible brogue. That's Rod in
helmet and breastplate, at right. (See and hear him in
this video clip.)
According to "Rod Taylor: An Aussie in
Hollywood," director Henry Koster sought someone who could speak
in a Welsh accent for a small role of a corporal who could deliver a
message to Sir Walter Raleigh. Author Stephen Vagg writes: "Although
the performance was not particularly distinguished (he lays on the
Welsh accent with a trowel), it had energy and the project was a
prestigious one: Rod had his start."
A few years after "The Virgin Queen," Taylor would star in
a far more adventurous and swashbuckling film set in the Elizabethan era,
"Seven Seas to Calais."
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