Spangler Arlington Brugh - for such was the impressive name with which Robert Taylor was born - was already displaying a diversity of talents in his youth on the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School he was a standout track athlete, but also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician and played the cello in the school orchestra. After graduating he thought of music as a vocation and started studying music at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, but he was lured westward in the early 1930s - not to Hollywood, as might be thought, but to study medicine at Pomona College.