The first thing I did when I received Margaret Talbot's
loving recollection of her father's life and the early movie
industry was to look up Lyle Talbot on the Internet Movie
Database. I didn't immediately know his name, but I know
I've seen his work. He has more than three-hundred credits,
in TV shows and movies dating back to the 1930s. The book
begins earlier than that, with his childhood in Nebraska and
describes how he fell into a career in show business and
turned it into a successful livelihood.
THE ENTERTAINER is more than a biography, though. Ms. Talbot
delves deeper into the culture of the times and how
entertainment both enhanced and reflected everyday life. For
example, when she describes her father's time working for a
traveling carnival, she tells you the history of the people
who ran it and worked there; describes the various
entertainments; and explains how the amusement company he
worked for was different from some of the others. She brings
that period vividly to life and tosses out interesting
tidbits that may not have a thing to do with Lyle Talbot's
life, but it helps you understand his place in the world at
that time.
Lyle kept very good scrapbooks of his life, and she
describes his mementos and even shares a few photos. She
also brings in quotes from interviews that he did over the
years, as well as snippets from articles about Lyle, his
work, and the industry in general. Of course, her father
told her many personal stories over the years, and his
reminiscences about Barbara Stanwyck, William Randolph
Hearst and Marian Davies, Bette Davis, and director Michael
Curtiz -- just to name a few -- are fascinating.
I also found the book to be very insightful in its
descriptions of the studio publicity machines,
sensationalism in the news, and the sea changes in
entertainment with the growth of the film industry, the
addition of sound, and the influx of television.
THE ENTERTAINER is an entertaining and informative review of
Hollywood history, wrapped around the rags to riches story
of a small town dreamer who became a star. I recommend it to
anyone who enjoys Hollywood biographies, film history, and
American history.
Using the life and career of her father, an early Hollywood
actor, New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot tells the thrilling
story of the rise of popular culture through a transfixing
personal lens. The arc of Lyle Talbot's career is in fact
the story of American entertainment. Born in 1902, Lyle left
his home in small-town Nebraska in 1918 to join a traveling
carnival. From there he became a magician's assistant, an
actor in a traveling theater troupe, a romantic lead in
early talkies, then an actor in major Warner Bros. pictures
with stars such as Humphrey Bogart and Carole Lombard, then
an actor in cult B movies, and finally a part of the advent
of television, with regular roles on The Adventures of Ozzie
and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. Ultimately, his career
spanned the entire trajectory of the industry.
In her captivating, impeccably researched narrative--a
charmed combination of Hollywood history, social history,
and family memoir--Margaret Talbot conjures warmth and
nostalgia for those earlier eras of '10s and '20s small-town
America, '30s and '40s Hollywood. She transports us to an
alluring time, simpler but also exciting, and illustrates
the changing face of her father's America, all while telling
the story of mass entertainment across the first half of the
twentieth century.
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