Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

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Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by moira finnie »

Here's the spot where we can post questions for our November Guest Author, Margaret Talbot, beginning on Monday, Nov. 4th and continuing Tuesday, Nov. 5th. Her delightful and thoughtful book about her father Lyle Talbot and his times, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Press), is just becoming available in paperback.

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In her own words, the youngest daughter of the actor Lyle Talbot explains that her father 'led a resolutely unexamined life,' but perhaps that was to his disadvantage, considering some of the vicissitudes he endured. Most of us think we know Lyle Talbot, having seen him at least once among the hundreds of movies and television shows from 1931 to 1987 in which he appeared as an actor. Capturing the feel of each period that her father lived through, Margaret traces his rambling path from the lonely Midwest, to life on the road as a magician's assistant, traveling with a carnival as a barker, a brief stint as a hypnotist's assistant, eventual acting jobs, life in stock companies and eventually the movies, Broadway, radio and television. At the height of his popular success in the 1930s, he was a promising Warner Bros. contract player who often played an appealingly jaunty fellow--even if his characters were sometimes rather unreliable screen partners. In these years he appeared with the likes of Carole Lombard, Shirley Temple, Humphrey Bogart, Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Ann Dvorak, and Kay Francis. His film credits in that decade include precodes such as Three On a Match, No More Orchids, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, Mary Stevens, MD, Mandalay, Heat Lightning, and many more. As his career went on, his position in the Hollywood firmament shifted, and his personal life sometimes took a chaotic turn, but Talbot's appearances in leading roles in B movies have also endured, including notoriously bad (but enjoyable) movies he made with filmmaker Ed Wood and others.

What makes this biography so different from most is the gifted Margaret Talbot's skill in evoking each of the periods that helped to shape her father and his films. She brings to life the raucous, insecure and rather romantic atmosphere of early Hollywood, as well as the impact of these and other transient institutions on the lives of the players and audiences. At the center of the book, however, is the dapper, "something-will-always-come-along" spirit of her father that informs every page so beautifully, as well as the realization that Margaret's mother, the actor's fourth wife, and the family that they created may have been his greatest bit of luck and finest achievement. Writing about her father, she describes him as a man who was "not especially good with money, respectful of fleeting joys, tenderly susceptible to beauty."

Please join us here this coming Monday and Tuesday to share in exploring the life and times of Lyle Talbot through his daughter Margaret's beautifully written book.
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by moira finnie »

Thanks for joining us today, Margaret. One of the aspects of your father's career that interests me is that after he began his acting career, he never really looked back. I often have the feeling that, even in some of the lesser projects he appeared in during his long, roller coaster career, there was a part of him that bubbled over with a sense of fun and delight in playing.

How do you think he felt about an actor's endless need to find work?

Given the built-in insecurities of an actor's life, did he ever consider another career?

As a very young man, he had his own stock company, though unfortunately, that came along at a time when talkies and the Depression were eroding the audiences for live theater. Do you think he enjoyed the footloose life of an actor or would he have liked to have become an actor-manager for the long term?

Thanks in advance for your answers.
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by JackFavell »

Hi. Ms. Talbot! Welcome to the SSO!

It's fantastic that you are here to talk about your father and even more fantastic that you have written a book about him. To me, he's kind of an unsung hero of classic film, working day in and day out to please movie fans throughout his career. It's always a treat when he turns up in a film - I check cast lists on TCM and if he's in a movie, I watch. I always wondered why he didn't become a bigger star, it seemed he had all the pre-requisites - talent, good looks and a great voice.

Two of my favorite Lyle Talbot performances are in the movies Three on a Match and Heat Lightning, where your dad got to stretch his acting legs, so to speak. Can you tell us anything about the making of these two movies, how your dad felt about the roles and the actors he worked with (not just the stars, but supporting characters too)?

I am quite curious about the footloose life he led before he went to Broadway and Hollywood. Growing up with a dad who had a few magician stints myself, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about your dad's various stints in carnivals and vaudeville? Did he start out as a magician?

On a different note, how did you get into writing? Was it wonderful to be published in the New Yorker?

Wendy
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by charlestranberg »

Welcome Ms. Talbot & thank you for taking the time to participate in this.

1) Your dad worked with several interesting directors including William Wellman, Henry Hathaway, Michael Curtiz, Roy Del Ruth and all the way to Edward D. Wood. Did he ever talk about any director(s) that he particularly liked working with and why?

2) My first memories of your dad are from television and watching afternoon reruns of THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE & HARRIET as a kid. I was wondering if he enjoyed working on Ozzie & Harriet and what his relationship was like with Ozzie and if you also have any memories of that show and visiting the set?

Thanks again!
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by MargaretTalbot »

Hi there,
I am so happy to be with you, and hope everybody is having a good Monday--if that's not a contradiction in terms--so far. It's a gorgeous, chilly morning in Washington D.C. where I live.

Moira and Wendy--Thank you for your great questions.

To answer your questions about the insecurity of an acting career, and whether my Dad ever considered switching to another career: He used to say that he had never turned down a job--and if he was a little sheepish about that, he was also proud, because it meant that he never had to do any other kind of work to support himself or his family. It's pretty common, of course, for actors to take other jobs in between acting stints, and the fact that my father never did was very important to him; he never did consider another career. One thing I really came to appreciate about my Dad while writing this book was the fact that he so valued being able entertain people for a living, and didn't feel bitter about the fact that he never became a big star. While researching the book I got a sense of how his studio, Warner Brothers, sought to promote him as the next Clark Gable in the early 30s. Motion Picture magazine featured him as the male star of tomorrow one year (Katharine Hepburn was the female star). There was a moment when it must have felt to him that he was really poised for the big time. He never made it into that firmament but he felt very lucky to be able to work at what he loved all his life.
Though he wasn't the greatest businessman, I do think he would have enjoyed a longer go at managing a theater company.

"Three on a Match" and "Heat Lightning" are two of my very favorite of my Dad's films and performances as well, so thank you for pointing those out, Wendy.
Both are very pre- Code, though "Heat Lightning," which was released in the Spring of 1934, just squeaked in before serious enforcement of the Code began. "Three on a Match," is a brisk 63-minute film with great female leads (Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis) and raw,torn-from-the-headlines energy. As the film historian Mark Viera says, it crams "history, sociology, sex, alcohol, drugs, adultery, kidnapping, blackmail and suicide" into a very tight package.
My father, who plays a seductive lowlife, has great chemistry with Ann Dvorak, as the bored society wife who runs away with him.
What I remember my Dad saying about that film was what a small role Humphrey Bogart had (he plays a stone cold hood) because those were the days before the studio had figured out what to do with Bogart; they didn't see him as a leading man, but as a sort of "thug number three" kind of actor. In fact they would drop his contract not long after (Bogart returned to the New York theater until Warners brought him back, at Leslie Howard's urging, to make "Petrified Forest" in 1936.) Bette Davis was similarly overlooked in that film, though to my Dad the seriousness and tremendous focus with which she approached her acting always stood out. Mervyn LeRoy, who directed "Thee on a Match," says in his memoir, "They gave me three unknown girls in that one--Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, and Ann Dvorak. I made a mistake when the picture was finished. I told an interviewer that I thought Joan Blondell was going to be a big star, Ann Dvorak had definite possibilities, but that I didn't think Bette Davis would make it." Oops.

"Heat Lightning" was a film I had never seen before I started working on the book. (Like a lot of pre-Code films it wasn't shown on TV when I was growing up. Now, TCM, bless them, shows it semi-regularly.) Two wonderful repertory outfits, the Roxie in San Francisco and the Northwest Film Society in Chicago, both screened it last Spring, and I think audiences really liked it--it's sort of a proto-Noir, a "Petrifed Forest" with a feminine, feminist and funny touch. It has loads of atmosphere and two strong female leads in Ann Dvorak and the wonderful Aline MacMahon. My Dad is a jumpy bank robber on the run who takes refuge (with his partner, Preston Foster) in the desert gas station/diner run by two sisters. To be honest, the only thing I ever heard about this movie--he made an awful lot of them in those years, and they must have been a bit of a blur--was how fun it was to get off a sound stage and into the Mojave desert for a change of pace--this was the rare Warner Brothers picture in those days that was filmed on location.
By the way, there is a new biography--the first--of the wonderful Ann Dvorak just out from the University Press of Kentucky, written by Christina Rice.

Okay, I'm going to post these--more answers to come!
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by moira finnie »

Thank you for your replies, Margaret.
MargaretTalbot wrote: By the way, there is a new biography--the first--of the wonderful Ann Dvorak just out from the University Press of Kentucky, written by Christina Rice.
I am pleased to announce that in addition to our forthcoming visit with Charles Tranberg to discuss his seminal biography, Fredric March: A Consummate Actor (BearManor), (Charles posts with the screen name of charlestranberg here on the SSO), we are looking forward to hosting a visit with Christina Rice later this month to learn more about her book, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel (Univ. Press of KY), which chronicles the life of the talented actress who shared the screen with your father six times.* (Christina is registered as Christina Rice here). More about these events later!

Margaret, your father's geniality and lack of bitterness about the course of his career seems to have been among his most endearing qualities. Did he feel that Warner Brothers was ever over-exposing him on-screen after he became a contract player there? Was the work load he and others shared in the studio system part of his decision to become one of the founding members of SAG? Did he become politically astute as a result of his union activities or were his politics linked to an instinctive sense of fairness?
____________________________________

*Ann Dvorak and Lyle Talbot appeared in Stranger in Town (1931), Love Is a Racket (1932), Three on a Match (1932), College Coach (1933), Heat Lightning (1934), and Murder in the Clouds (1934).
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by MargaretTalbot »

Okay, I'm back, with a fresh cup of coffee, a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon. Heaven.

To answer your question, Wendy, about my father's early days, touring with carnivals and tent shows through the small towns of the Midwest in the teens of twenties--I loved those stories and that material, that sense of delving into what the critic Greil Marcus calls "the old weird America." (And that's very cool that your Dad did stints as a magician.) My father's first job of that kind, in fact his first in show business, was working for a hypnotist named MacKnight. He would pose in the audience as a local boy, then be called up on stage, where he would be suspended between two chairs, and have a rock broken on his chest--an experience to which he would supposedly be impervious because he was supposedly in such a deep, paralytic slumber. (In fact, MacKnight never successfully hypnotized my father, who always felt kind of guilty about that and learned to pretend quite well--to act, in other words. And it was actually a dangerous stunt--people died doing it.) In the book, I put his experience in context by exploring a hypnotism craze that spread across the country in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. There are some great stories about it, and you realize that hypnotism became a popular explanation for a while, of why teenagers ran away from home, husbands and wive strayed, and so on. I came across headlines like this "Army of Itinerant Svengalis Spread Dangerous Teaching Across the Country" or "Was Hypnotized and then Wedded."

About The New Yorker: I've been there as a staff writer since 2003, and it's been such a good experience. They take such care with all the aspects of getting a piece in shape for publication: editing, copy editing, fact-checking. It feels to me like my articles are sort of like Dorothy in Oz, when she's getting all buffed up--scrub, scrub here, scrub, scrub there. Can they even dye my eyes to match my gown? Jolly old town.

Charles-- Thank you for your questions and your kind remarks. I am really looking forward to reading your new book.

As for directors my father talked about or particularly enjoyed working with: William Wellman was the one he talked about the most, because he was such a vivid and sort of incorrigible personality. My Dad referred to him by his nickname, Wild Bill, talked about his experiences as a flyer in World War I. He talked about how Wellman liked to get authentic-looking fight and action scenes, so he would do things like this: in a picture called "College Coach," in which my Dad played a cocky quarterback, Wellman took the real USC and UCLA football players who were extras in the picture aside, and told him my Dad had played football for Nebraska (he was from Nebraska but he'd certainly never played football!) so they could go ahead and tackle him for real, give it all they had. They did, and they knocked my Dad out cold. (The movie is cynical and funny, a sharp satire of college football corruption, so some of these Wellmanesque stratagems probably paid off.) There's also a funny story about my father's screen test--too long to tell here--and how Wellman was convinced that my father was doing something very subversive with it when he was not. That's in the book.
Michael Curtiz was someone he talked about, too--partly because his slightly fractured English produced some memorably baffling directions: "Go when I don't say stand still" was one that threw my Dad, and that he used to quote with us. (And of course, he famously said, "Bring on the empty horses" when he wanted horses without riders.)

As for the Ozzie and Harriet days, he enjoyed those because it was steady work, and Ozzie was a good businessman, which impressed him, and made my Dad feel like he had a secure gig. He had known Harriet when she was Harriet Hilliard, a band singer and vaudeville performer with a wilder (and more interesting!) life than she portrayed as Harriet Nelson, housewife- in -chief. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet went off the air in 1966, when I was 5, so I don't have memories of going on the set, though I do have a few of Ozzie coming by the house and sounding just like befuddled Ozzie on the show, and of meeting Ricky Nelson in the early 70s, when he put out "Garden Party." My oldest brother, Steve, who is now a documentary filmmaker, was a kid actor who played the mischievous, tow-headed Gilbert on "Leave it to Beaver," so for a while there, my family was contributing more than its share to the idealized version of the American family depicted on 50s television.
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by MargaretTalbot »

Hi Moira,
Yes, as you say my Dad was one of the original 21 founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, in 1933, and he devoted a lot of time to organizing, and hosting fundraising galas for it. His main motivations were the innate sense of fairness you refer to, the sense of collegiality he felt he brought from the theater, which he regarded as less hierarchical than Hollywood--and the oppressive hours the studios demanded of actors in those days. "Our objection was we would work fourteen-, fifteen-hour days and then be called back the next morning." he said. "Saturday night they liked to work till midnight because you had Sunday off. The Catholic actors, Pat O'Brien and Bill Gargan and Spencer Tracy, would joke that they'd barely get home in time to make it to Mass."
Getting SAG launched entailed real risk--studio officials did their best to wheedle and intimidate actors into spurning the union; they sent spies to meetings. And in the early years, SAG also had to fend off Chicago mobsters, especially a very scary guy named Willy Bioff, who were trying to take over the guild; the debonair actor Robert Montgomery, an early president of the guild, gets much of the credit for holding Bioff and his henchmen at bay. It's quite a story: I'd I'd heard bits and piece of it over the years from my Dad, and filled in much more for the book.
My Dad remained very loyal to and grateful for the guild, even though he did think that his early activism with it may have blackened his name at Warner Brothers.
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by Rita Hayworth »

One Burning Question

Dear Margaret Talbot,

Thanks for joining us today ...

How your Father managed to get the role of LEX LUTHOR in Superman back in 1949? ... He was absolutely brilliant in that role and that role is considered iconic in my world of B MOVIES / MOVIE SERIALS back in those days. I loved him in ATOM MAN verses SUPERMAN and he looked exactly like the Luthor in the Golden Age of Comics of which I read my older brothers Comic Books back when I was growing up. :)
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by JackFavell »

Ms. Talbot,

Thanks! You've made me go get the nutella from the cuboard and a spoon. :D

You had me laughing with the quote from Michael Curtiz, and fascinated by the hypnotism craze, that early weirdness in America you describe so well. I can't wait to get your book, not just because I am a Lyle Talbot fan. The history covered sounds just like my cup of tea.

I have a couple more questions, if you don't mind?

Did you have trouble finding some of your dad's movies while researching the book? Did you need to brush up on his films?

How were you able to do research for the book, when so many of those involved in making movies are gone (not to mention those on the hypnotism circuit :D )? Why did your dad run off to join those early acts he was involved with? He sounds adventurous without seeming to have the deep, dark secrets that some actors with this background had, but perhaps that's just his jaunty demeanor in films...?

Did your father have any particular friends in the film industry? Cast, crew, cinematographers, supporting players, agents, producers, whatever?

Did your dad sing at all? I've always thought his voice was marvelous. Did he read you bedtime stories or act out fairy tales for you?
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by mongoII »

Hi Margaret, and welcome to the Silver Screen Oasis. It's a pleasure having you here.

Of all the beautiful people that your father co-starred with was there some that he particularly didn't get along with or perhaps didn't care for? Including directors.
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by movieman1957 »

Thanks for coming by. I'm not far from you over just south of Baltimore so it's nice to find another neighbor.

Looking over your father's catalog there is an enormous number of television credits. I think outside of "The Ozzie and Harriet Show" the most episodes he did of anything was 7. Did he enjoy the variety of the work or was he hoping for something that was more fixed?

I guess after a certain point in a career one must feel pretty confident the work will be steady. I was just curious if he thought things would dry up.
Chris

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by MargaretTalbot »

Hi there,
Nutella is a great idea :D JackFavell. I think I may nip into my daughter's Halloween candy, though. (Ah, the hazards and pleasures of working from home.)
To continue with your questions: The research did present some challenges given that most of the players in this story, including my Dad, who died in 1996, are no longer with us. But, he did a number of oral-history-type interviews when he was alive, one for the Screen Actors Guild, for instance, about his role in its history, that were very helpful; he left fantastic scrapbooks that date back to the teens, and he told us a lot of stories in my lifetime. My brothers, David and Stephen Talbot, and my sister, Cynthia Talbot, are all blessed with great memories, too, so that was a boon.

Why did he run away to join the carnivals and hypnotists? You're right that he was not a tortured soul. But he was impelled by a family tragedy. He grew up in a tiny town called Brainard, Nebraska. His father, Ed Henderson, had run away to Pittsburgh with his mother and married her when she was already pregnant with my Dad. Lyle was born in 1902, and his young mother died soon after of typhoid fever, after Ed brought her back home to Brainard, desperately ill and longing for her own mother. Her mother--Lyle's grandmother--was a tough, formidable, illiterate Irishwoman, who ran a hotel for traveling salesman in the town of Brainard. She never forgave Ed Henderson for taking her daughter away, and blamed him for her death. So when Lyle was just a baby she kidnapped him from Ed, who was trying to raise him on his own. Lyle grew up in the hotel; he had no room of his own and slept in the beds of the various Czech hired girls who worked for his grandmother (setting up a future pattern--at least until my mother came along).
His Dad, Ed, always wanted to resume a relationship with him, and finally, when Lyle was a teenager, his grandmother relented. By then Ed, who had been a barber, had fulfilled a life-long dream to be on the stage. He and his second wife, Anna, travelled together as a vaudeville act, and Lyle joined them on the road.

On particular friends in the industry: He was generally friendly with people on the crew, and appreciated other actors--like Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard--who were also. He liked Marion Davies very much, and was a guest of hers at Hearst Castle several times. In the 30s, he hung out what he called "the Irish crowd"--Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, James Cagney, Bill Boyd, and Walter Catlet-- at the character actor William Gargan's house, where they drank in Gargan's garage. Lyle's Hollywood girlfriends, whom I learned quite a bit about writing this book, included the notorious Countess Di Frasso (he was the boyfriend between Gary Cooper and Bugsy Siegel!), Estelle Taylor, a glamorous actress of the silent era who had been married to Jack Dempsey, and Lina Basquette, a former Ziegfeld showgirl who had starred in the Cecil DeMille movie "The Godless Girl" as an atheist hottie, and been married to one of the Warner brothers. She was a handful; there are some good stories about her in the book.

Did he sing, and did he sing or read to me?
I'm glad you like his voice. I did love it, and it's one of the things I miss most about him--that warm and burnished instrument offering me scrambled eggs or pancakes in the morning! My Mom was the real singer in the family, but he loved music, especially jazz standards, and had a few--"Pennies from Heaven" was a favorite-- that he would sing in the car. What I best remember him reading to me was the Willa Cather novel "My Antonia" which he loved because it was set in the small-town Nebraska people with Czech immigrants that he had grown up in; and, at my insistence, all those horse books by Marguerite Henry. (Misty of Chincoteague, Born to Trot...)

Okay, off to pick up my daughter from school; will she notice the missing Almond Joys?
More later...
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by JackFavell »

Wow, thanks SO much for all the information and details, Ms. Talbot! The way you write combined with the colorful life your dad led is making me wish I already had the book! I don't think I can wait for Christmas as I had originally planned. I want it now!

Are any of those screen actor's guild interviews available to the public? Wishful thinking probably, on my part.

My daughter is unfortunately old enough to have a very good idea of how much candy she got...
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Re: Welcome to Margaret Talbot, Our Guest on 11/4 & 11/5

Post by MargaretTalbot »

Hi again,
First, to Mongo, who asked about people Lyle worked with whom he might not have cared for much. In general, my father was not a critical or judgmental person--or maybe not all that discerning or discriminating. He had good things to say about the vast majority of people he worked or socialized with. There were a few exceptions: Charleton Heston (didn't like his politics; found him pompous); Ronald Reagan (couldn't quite believe he'd become president); once or twice, he mentioned that Ginger Rogers, with whom he had made a couple of Poverty Row movies in the early 30s (" A Shriek in the Night," "The Thirteenth Guest") snubbed, or to use an old-fashioned term, high-hatted, him in later years--though this wasn't something that really bothered him or anything.
Ed Wood was somebody who puzzled him, certainly--especially when, one night Wood was staying over at my parents' apartment after a drunken premiere party, and he donned one of my Mom's negligees to come to the breakfast table with my parents and my brothers, who were then little boys! And he was embarrassed by the fact that he'd worked for him. But, in the 80s and 90s, when Wood was being re-discovered and my father was being interviewed about him, he remembered him fondly and with amusement as an eager, earnest guy who paid him every day as promised, albeit with a handful of crumpled up bills. My Dad liked Johnny Depp's portrayal of Wood in the Tim Burton biopic very much. (I suspect I'm the only person who ever cried during that movie; I first saw it in 1996 right after my Dad died.) My Dad had mostly good things to say about the whole peculiar Wood company--I think they reminded him of his days in carnivals, and he figured they were all just trying to make a living with whatever talent they had. Indeed, the only one I ever heard him describe as "weird" was the Amazing Criswell, the psychic with the meringue-like coiffure, whom my father found baffling because he seemed never to break character--even when they ran into each other in the elevator of the Highland Towers, the apartment building they both lived in for a while, and he offered his predictions in lugubrious tones.

To Movieman1957, practically a neighbor since he lives in Baltimore: First, you're lucky. Baltimore is so much cooler than D.C.
Second, you're right--my Dad did a ton of guest appearances on TV. He embraced TV in a big way because he embraced every new medium of entertainment that came along. He wasn't picky and he wasn't nostalgic, really. He liked live television especially. But yes, I think he would have liked to have more regular gigs (he was a regular on the Bob Cummings show, and then The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) for the financial security, especially after he had a family. And I think as, essentially a freelancer, he did always worry, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the roles would dry up entirely. That's why a call from the agent was a big old cause for celebration in my household.


JackFavell: Though I don't think the transcripts of those interviews with early SAG members are on line, this link has capsule biographies of the founders, and some excerpts of interviews, I believe: http://www.sagaftra.org/the-first-board-1933
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