The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century
Lyle Talbot (1902–96) was a familiar face on big and small screens, an actor you would recognize even if you couldn’t name him. He was a regular on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet; he did guest-star turns on Newhart and St. Elsewhere; and he costarred with such notables as Bogart, Tracy, and Lombard. Talbot, who had also been a carnival barker and a hypnotist’s assistant—was nearly 60 when the author, his daughter, was born—and so the book is much more a traditional biography than many memoirs written by celebrity offspring. It’s also better written than most of them, Margaret being an experienced journalist with no axe to grind or bad memories to exorcize. She writes about her father with great fondness, remembering him as a sweet man, a “something will turn up” optimist. He was a product of the Hollywood studio system, a working actor, never a star. And, yet, because he worked during Hollywood’s golden era, his story is also Hollywood’s story, as much the history of Hollywood as it is the biography of one of its less-famous actors. A fascinating slice of movie life. --David Pitt