[citation needed] From 1942 to 1946, Taylor served in the United States Navy during World War II.
During his service, he wrote numerous stories and Adrift in a Boneyard, an extended fiction about survivors of a disaster.
In 1949,The Saturday Evening Post commissioned a series of biographical sketches of W. C. Fields.
Taylor continued to write fiction and biographies, including one on Winston Churchill.
[citation needed] Taylor's 1958 novel The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, about a 14-year-old and his father in the California Gold Rush, won the Pulitzer Prize and was purchased for a film, but eventually became a television series, instead.