Glen H. Taylor

Infobox Senator | name=Glen H. Taylor


jr/sr=United States Senator
state=Idaho
party=Democrat
otherparty=Progressive (1948)
term=January 3, 1945 – January 3, 1951
preceded=D. Worth Clark
succeeded=Herman Welker
date of birth=birth date|1904|4|12|mf=y
place of birth=Portland, Oregon
date of death=death date and age|1984|4|28|1904|4|12
place of death=Millbrae, California
spouse=Dora Taylor
profession=entrepreneur, musician
religion=

Glen Hearst Taylor (April 12, 1904 – April 28, 1984) was a colorful and controversial politician, businessman and United States Senator from Idaho. He was the vice presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket in the 1948 election. Taylor was otherwise a member of the Idaho Democratic Party.

Early life

Taylor was the son of a wandering preacher. He moved to a homestead near Kooskia, Idaho, as a child and attended the public schools in Idaho. He later joined a stock theater company in 1919. He became the owner and manager of various entertainment enterprises between 1926 and 1944. He was a country-western singer. His older sister, Lena, became famous as a jazz singer under the name Lee Morse in the 1920s.

He was inspired by King C. Gillette's book "The People's Corporation".

Political career

He ran for the Senate in 1940 in a special election to fill the remaining term of the late William E. Borah, but lost to John W. Thomas with 47.1 percent to Thomas's 53.0 percent. He ran again in 1942 against Thomas and lost a close race, 51.5 - 48.5.

Taylor ran for the Senate for a third time in 1944, defeating incumbent D. Worth Clark in the Democratic primary and Governor C. A. Bottolfsen in the general election.

In July 1947, Taylor was asked by a United Press reporter what he thought about reports that remnants of a UFO had been found by the Air Force near Roswell, N.M. Taylor replied that he almost hoped flying saucers would turn out to be spaceships from another planet. "They could end our petty arguments on earth." He went on to say that no matter what the UFOs turned out to be, they "can't be laughed off."

"Even if it is only a psychological phenomenon, it is a sign of what the world is coming to," Taylor explained. "If we don't ease the tensions, the whole world will be full of psychological cases and eventually turn into a global nuthouse."

In 1948 Taylor was the vice presidential candidate on the Progressive ticket headed by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa. The Wallace/Taylor ticket failed to carry any states and won only 2.4 percent of the nationwide popular vote.

Taylor was arrested on May 1, 1948, in Birmingham, Alabama by police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor, for attempting to use a door reserved for African Americans, rather than the whites-only door, while attempting to attend a meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. He was subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct. [Diane McWhorter, "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution" (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2001), pp. 63-65.]

In 1950 Taylor ran for the Senate again but was defeated in the Democratic primary by Clark, who in turn lost in the general election to Republican Herman Welker.

Taylor served as president of Coryell Construction Co. from 1950 to 1952. He ran again for the Senate in 1954 but was decisively beaten by Republican incumbent Henry Dworshak, winning only 37.2 percent of the vote. His sixth and final Senate race came in 1956, but he narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Frank Church.

Later life

After his 1956 loss, Taylor and his wife, Dora, moved to Millbrae, California, and began making hairpieces by hand. By 1960, Taylor Topper Inc. had become the major manufacturer of hair replacements in the United States. Taylor told the "Washington Post" in 1978 that it was something he was very familiar with. "I was 18, a juvenile leading man in a traveling show, and my hair had begun to fall out. There isn't much demand for bald juvenile leading men, and I tried everything - sheep dip, what have you - and that just made it fall out faster."

Taylor explained that he had run for Congress without the hairpiece and found that voters "didn't have much use for bald politicians" because "I ran the fourth time with it and won." His original toupee was made from a tin pie plate, which he lined with pink felt and swatches of human hair.

During the 1948 Progressive Party run for President

'I remember him as an incredibly great "off the cuff" speaker and or orator. He made a campaign speech to a crowd at the University of Chicago one evening, came on stage, took off his wrist watch, threw it into the audience and then told the young man who caught it that he would speak only for fifteen minutes and when the fifteen minutes were up the student who caught the watch was to stand up and say, "Glen, your time is up," and he would quit speaking. For fifteen minutes this man made a rip roaring speech that had everyone mesmerized. And when the, "times up", was announced he stopped right in the middle of what he was saying, waved to the crowd and said goodnight. He broke up the audience. I never saw a performance like that in my life. It was an incredible experience.'

- Unknown

References

External links

* [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000079 US Senate biography]