Heavily recruited for his football skills, Josh chose Dartmouth College, where he was a member of two Ivy Championship teams and the Phi Delta Alpha fraternity, graduating with an A.B.
On the way to Alaska he stopped in Los Angeles to visit friends and was offered a job as manager of the Westwood Village Bratskeller.
[4] He spent a year and a half at the restaurant which catered to celebrities and, surrounded by actors and producers, decided to give up a future in law to pursue acting.
After the Bratskeller closed, he worked as a bartender at the Riverside Lounge in Santa Monica until he snagged his first acting role playing a contemporary cowboy on an episode of Barnaby Jones in 1976.
His notoriety heightened as he became an integral part of the fictional landscape of Salem, the setting of the soap, and this eventually led to primetime starring tryouts.
Valerie Harper was fired by Lorimar-Telepictures, the series' parent studio, during that year's filming hiatus (between seasons two and three) following a contract dispute.
Sandy Duncan was named as Harper's replacement, and Taylor felt that, to ensure the continued success of the show, he would leave Days in order expand his sitcom role.
Seeing this as a foothold to a lasting role in primetime, Taylor only thought it appropriate that the Michael Hogan character would be home more often for his family, both in the wake of his wife's death and in order to help his sister (Duncan) settle into the household.
In the fall of 1987, after a ten-year run, the character had passed the bar exam and become a lawyer, serving the residents of Salem, if only for a brief period.