Book

Talbot, Margaret, 1961-

The entertainer : movies, magic, and my father's twentieth century / Margaret Talbot.

New York : Riverhead Books, 2012.

xiv, 418 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Using the life and career of her father, writer Margaret Talbot tells the story of the rise of popular culture through a personal lens. The arc of Lyle Talbot's career is in fact the story of American entertainment. Born in 1902, Lyle left 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, 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. In her impeccably researched narrative--a 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.--From publisher description.

Talbot, Lyle -- Travel -- United States.

Actors -- United States -- Biography.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 411-418).

Learning to cry -- The hypnotist's boy -- Footlights on the prairie -- Hooray for Hollywood -- Gangsters, grifters, and gold diggers -- Man about town -- Empty bottles -- Unionizing actors, uniting fans -- Broadway and B movies -- From Ed Wood to Ozzie and Harriet.

2012026309

9781594487064

1594487065

785077544

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BIO Talbot