Lyle Talbot

At 94 years old, Lyle Talbot physical status not available right now. We will update Lyle Talbot's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Lyle Talbot (born Lisle Henderson; 1932 to 1956) was an American actor on stage and screen, best known for his film work from 1931 to 1960, as well as his appearances on television in the 1950s and 1960s.

Joe Randolph, Ozzie Nelson's best friend and neighbor, appeared on ABC's Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet for ten years.

He began his film career under Warner Bros.

The beginnings of sound film in the United States.

He appeared in more than 150 films, first as a young matinee idol, the star of many B films, and then as a character actor.

He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and later served on the board of the Society.

In a book written by his youngest daughter Margaret Talbot entitled The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century, Talbot's long career as an actor is chronicled (Riverhead Books 2012).

Early life

Lyle was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the only child of Florence May (née Talbot) and Joel Edward Henderson, both natives of Nebraska, was born. Florence died at her mother's house in Brainard, Nebraska, from ailments related to typhoid fever in May 1902. Lyle was then raised in Brainard by his grandmother, Mary Talbot, who changed her infant grandson's surname from Henderson to her own and added "Florenz" as her middle name in honor of her daughter. Talbot and his grandmother moved to Omaha, Nebraska, later as a youth. He went from high school to work as a hypnotist's assistant, part-time magician, and as an actor, delighting audiences at traveling tent shows and theaters around the Midwest.

Personal life and death

Talbot's next married novelist Henry Miller (1937–1947) had many romantic relationships with Elaine Melchoir (1940), Abigail Adams (1942), and Keven "Eve" McClure (1946–1947). Talbot married Margaret Epple, a young actress and singer who took the name "Paula" and occasionally went by the stage names of "Paula Deaven" or "Margaret Abbott," for the fifth time and final time in 1948. She was 20 years old and had a drinking problem; he was 46 years old. Talbot stopped drinking under Paula's influence, and the pair performed together on stage in summer stock and community theater. They had four children, lived in Studio City, California (where Talbot was honorary mayor in the 1960s), and were married for more than 40 years until Paula's death in 1989.

Talbot moved to San Francisco, where both of his sons and their families lived. Talbot died at the age of 94 in San Francisco, California, on March 2, 1996. His death was attributed to congestive heart failure. He was helped by his children, three of whom—Stephen Talbot, David Talbot, and Margaret Talbot—had worked in media development, writing, or journalism. Cynthia Talbot, Lyle's elder daughter, had opted for a medical career, becoming a surgeon and then a residency director in Portland, Oregon.

Source

Film career

Talbot founded "The Talbot Players" in Memphis, Tennessee, where he recruited his father and stepmother Anna Henderson to be among the company's roster of performers after years of stage experience in his travels. Talbot left California at the end of 1931 to seek more lucrative acting roles in motion pictures. He had some experience, but not so much in film, especially in small roles in a few shorts (1931), which included a bit of a gangster in The Nightingale (1931) and playing a police captain in The Clyde Mystery (1931). Both of those low-budget, two-reel shorts were shot in New York City and produced by Warner Bros. in association with Vitaphone in Brooklyn.

Talbot's arrival in California at the start of 1932 was timely, considering that Hollywood was still in the formative years of the sound era, when studios continued to look for leading actors, but also had appropriate voices and articulate speech patterns for the early audio technologies that were used and refined on film sets. Despite the fact that Talbot's scene mimicted the studio's production chief Darryl F. Zanuck, the actor had those attributes for his screen test at Warner Bros. It also impressed "Wild Bill" William Wellman, one of the studio's top writers, who wanted to cast the 30-year-old actor in his forthcoming film Love Is a Racket. Talbot accepted Zanuck's bid to join the company's expanding ranks of contract players, which included rising stars Betty Davis and Humphrey Bogart. In Unholy Love, a Warner Bros. drama starring Albert Ray Productions, Talbot appeared as a central supporting character well before his role in Love Is a Racket. "Jerry" by Lyle's portrayal did not go unnoticed by film industry trade publications. "British Theatre Owners and Potential Audiences are urging theater owners and prospective viewers to pay closer attention to three main characters in the film, as well as Lyle Talbot's "whom Warner Brothers are preparing for spectacular roles."

Three on a Match (1932), Spencer Tracy, College Coach (1932), Mary Stevens, M.D., are two other notable films in which Talbot appeared in his first years at Warner Bros. (1932). (1933), Ladies They Discuss (1933), and Mandalay (1934), where he portrays an alcoholic doctor struggling to avoid drinking. He continued to appear in a number of co-starring roles, including romancing Mae West in Young Man (1936), pursuing opera actress Grace Moore in One Night of Love (1934), and playing a bank robber in Heat Lightning (1934).

Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, Glenda Farrell, Marion Davies, and Shirley Temple appeared opposite an array of other celebrities over his career, including Bette Davis, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak, Barbara Stanwyck, Barbara Stanwyck, Barbara Stanwyck, Melissa Astor, Joan Blondell, Marion Davies, and Shirley Temple. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, and Tyrone Power all took the screen with him. Talbot appeared in over 175 films during his film career.

Talbot participated in one of Hollywood's most lavish and glamorous publicity exhibitions, including Bette Davis, Preston Foster, Leo Carrillo, cowboy singer Tom Mix, Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm, comedian Joe E. Brown, and a chorus line of Busby Berkeley dancers early in his career with Warner Bros. The established studio stars and rising stars and staff of a theatre company all traveled aboard "The 42nd Street Special," a commuter train that was richly decorated in silver and gold leaf and finished with electric lights, was on display in the city's historic theater. The Hollywood visitors' latest Busby Berkeley musical 42nd Street was popular in hundreds of towns along their route. They also attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inauguration in Washington, D.C., as a symbol of the studio's love for the country's new president. The train returned to California a few days after arriving in New York City on March 9. Talbot, who was recently divorced from a brief marriage in 1930, was described as "handsome as hell" and "likeable as a collie" in extensive news coverage of The 42nd Street Special's itinerary. Warner Bros. was obviously satisfied with his appearances for the studio, both on- and off-set, for the New York-based trade paper "Lyle Talbot," the country's longest-serving train, "42nd Street," according to the New York-based trade paper, "Lyle Talbot," who was on the train touring the country, has been placed under long-term contracts by Warners."

In its March 1933 issue, the monthly movie fan magazine Photoplay chronicled Talbot's appearance in its March 1933 issue, distributing it to its followers and newsstands at the same time when the 42nd Street Special was touring the country. The essay, written Sara Hamilton and titled "Born to be a Villain," gave readers some insight into the actor's general life and personal tastes, as well as some details about his early life and personal tastes, right down to his "cheap socks":

Talbot, who appeared on television for the first time six days a week, wanted to join the Screen Actors Guild's first board of directors in July 1933. According to reports, his activism in SAG union relations damaged his career. Warner Bros. dropped his role in 1936, affecting Talbot's acting opportunities right away. He never got back to film, but he did find steady work as a believable character actor, affable neighbors, or crafty villains with equal finesse. Talbot's supporting roles spanned the gamut: cowboys, pirates, surgeons, engineers, physicians, soldiers, physicians, economists, lawyers, newspaper editors, and boxers. "I'm really straightforward, I never turned down a career, not one...ever," he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1984. He began performing in, as Talbot himself said in the same Times interview, "some true stinkers." These films include three by Ed Wood (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and a motion picture that has been cited by media commentators as the "worst film ever made" in American cinematic history: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Talbot appeared in Gold Raiders (1951) and appeared in four comedies with The Bowery Boys as a villain.

Talbot was notable for being the first live-action actor to appear in two key DC Comics characters on film: Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin, and Lex Luthor in Atom Man vs. Superman (who at the time was simply known as Luthor). Talbot is the first of a long line of actors to play these roles, with Jeffrey Wright and Jesse Eisenberg as the most prominent (as of 2022) respectively.

Talbot returned to the Warner Bros. big screen in 1960, after more than 20 years in a Dore Schary bio-pic, Sunrise at Campobello starring Ralph Bellamy. It was Talbot's penultimate film performance.

Source