With parents like his, Buck Taylor was never a stranger to the film industry, even as a child. His parents were both performers, with his father predominantly appearing in Westerns. Still, as a young man, the Gunsmoke actor had aspirations of qualifying for the Olympics and didn’t show any interest in following in his parents’ footsteps until he was older.
When he did finally make his way to the screen, Taylor predominantly worked as a stuntman, and would have been quite content to continue like that forever, were it not for an injury that changed his body as well as his mind.
In an interview with the Dayton Daily News, Taylor recalled the incident, which occurred on the set of The Rebel, a series starring Nick Adams. Taylor was fairly frank in his explanation. He said, “What happened was I didn’t know what I was doing. I was riding like hell and Nick was kneeling on the ground, shooting at me. I was supposed to get hit and vault off the horse, but I didn’t have a steel step like they usually do.”
Once Taylor’s foot missed that step, that’s when things began to go wrong. The actor continued, “Well, my foot caught in the stirrup and it threw me back into the horse. You’re supposed to roll, but I didn’t — I just bounced.”
At the end of the scene, Taylor had chipped a bone in his shoulder. It wasn’t a major injury. If anything, it did more to affect him internally than externally. Taylor confessed that it was this incident that led him to begin acting.
Strangely enough, once Taylor had children of his own, his two sons elected to follow their father’s lead and both began working as stuntmen. Taylor appeared with both of them in the film Cowboys and Aliens. Of the opportunity to act with his sons, Taylor confessed to the Star-Telegram, “It just doesn’t get any better than that for me. It is something I’ll never forget.”