The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My
Father’s Twentieth Century. Margaret Talbot. Penguin Group USA. November 2013. 432 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9781594631887.
The
Entertainer… covers a large swatch of twentieth century
entertainment as history and also a biography of the author’s father, Lyle
Talbot. It’s quite obvious that Margaret
was deeply fond of her father, although her grandmother didn’t quite like the
influence he had on his daughter. But
the tales she heard from her Dad clearly fascinated her and made her realize
that the history of entertaining was one to share with the world because of its
unique evolution over time and with the additional development of new technologies
so rapidly occurring during the 20th Century.
To begin with the reader is
introduced to the world of the “story” as her father shared events and
characters galore in his long career; he was already sixty when his daughter
was born. This is the world we learn
began with side shows, circuses, traveling stage shows, hypnotists with real
and criminal skills, silent screen movies, “talkies,” big screen movies, and so
much more until one gets the full picture that just also includes America’s
development. An interesting part that is
sometimes unrecognized is how much small rural towns contributed to the spread
of entertainment, whether it was good or bad.
The monotony of life led to a demand for such entertainment which also
served as morality plays, stories in which common people could identify with
similar characters, and just downright plain silliness to lighten the financial
and work burdens of most Americans. At times the entertainment was quite bawdy
and probably should have been banned but wasn’t as there was little
preoccupation with ratings in the 1920s and 1930s and even later.
Then we read about Lyle
Talbot’s career which spanned every type of possible acting from gangsters and
romance stories to cowboy tales and more.
Lyle Talbot never really made it big in the sense of his own performance
but certainly worked with the “big” names in the industry, from Mae West to
Clark Gable and more. He also acted in
well-known TV serials and actually performed in Hollywood and New York great
shows, including Lincoln Center. A multitude of famous and not so well-known
films are listed with leading and minor actors and actresses.
Margaret Talbot prefers to
focus more on the varying talents of her father and other actors and
actresses. While she glosses over the
difficulties of such a lifestyle, including her father’s weakness for less than
savory women and absence because of constant traveling that goes with the job, she
does create in the reader the sense that acting skills had to change as well as
the means by which entertainment was offered.
She tells some funny stories about how her father flubbed certain
performances such as when he was supposed to feign a punch on another character
but wound up knocking him out and more like this account.
This is a book for any
person with even the faintest interest in entertainment, whether that be in
pre-movie entertainment, movies, TV movies and serial shows, and the theater. All in all, Margaret Talbot has offered a
panoramic history and depiction that should be required reading for everyone in
the industry and those who love the same for all the reasons so obvious in
Margaret Talbot’s tribute to one of the greatest industries in the world!
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