Lyle Talbot

 ( 1902 Births ) 

Talbot was notable too for being the first live-action actor to play two prominent DC Comics characters on-screen: Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin, and supervillain Lex Luthor in Atom Man vs. Superman (who at the time was simply known as Luthor). Talbot began a longstanding tradition of actors in these roles that were most recently (as of 2022) filled by Jeffrey Wright and Jesse Eisenberg, respectively. He also had a role on The Vigilante movie serial too for the original Vigilante Greg Saunders, again for DC Comics

In 1960, after an absence of more than 20 years, Talbot returned to the Warner Bros. big screen, appearing in the Franklin D. Roosevelt bio-pic, Sunrise at Campobello written by Dore Schary and starring Ralph Bellamy. It was Talbot's penultimate film appearance.

He also was featured in non-singing roles in a number of musicals, including Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Opera Company 1964 productions of Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate," /ref> Talbot appeared as Captain Brackett in a 1967 revival of South Pacific at (Lincoln Center) starring Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi.

Throughout the '60s and'70s and into the '80s, Talbot was a frequent guest star in productions of "My Fair Lady" as Colonel Pickering and "Camelot" as King Pellinore at the Music Circus in Sacramento, California.

In 1962, Talbot directed and co-starred with Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and a young Sally "Hot Lips" Kellerman in Marriage Go Round, a play Talbot and the Nelsons took on the road again in the early 1970s.

He also starred in the Preston Jones drama, "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia," at the Alley Theatre in Houston and the Chicago area Lincolnshire Theater.

Talbot also acted in a variety of early television Westerns. He played Colonel Billings three times on The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951–1955), appeared four times as a judge on the syndicated series The Cisco Kid, guest-starred in four episodes of Gene Autry's The Range Rider in 1952 and 1953, was cast five times in different roles on The Lone Ranger between 1950 and 1955, and played Sheriff Clyde Chadwick in the 1959 episode "The Sanctuary" on Colt .45, and the episode "Two Tickets to Ten Strike" on Maverick in 1959. In the 1950s and beyond, he performed as well in a wide range of other drama and comedy programs. In 1955 he portrayed the character Baylor in six episodes or "chapters" of the early sci-fi series . From 1953 to 1957, he was cast as different characters in four episodes of the anthology series Lux Video Theatre. In 1967, he played Colonel Blake three times on The Beverly Hillbillies and appeared three times between 1965 and 1971 on Green Acres. On one episode of Green Acres in 1969, Talbot played himself but in the fictional role of a senator, spoofing actors such as Ronald Reagan who actually became politicians later in their careers.Both Reagan and /ref>

Some examples of other series on which Talbot made guest appearances include Annie Oakley; It's a Great Life, Leave it to Beaver, The Public Defender; The Pride of the Family; Crossroads; Hey, Jeannie!; The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show; Broken Arrow; The Millionaire; Richard Diamond, Private Detective; Tales of Wells Fargo; Buckskin; Cimarron City; Maverick; Angel; Hawaiian Eye; 77 Sunset Strip; Surfside 6; The Roaring 20s; The Restless Gun; Stagecoach West; The Red Skelton Show; The Lucy Show, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok; Topper; The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin; Laredo; Perry Mason; The Real McCoys; Rawhide; Wagon Train; Charlie's Angels; Newhart; The Dukes of Hazzard; St. Elsewhere; Adam-12; and Who's the Boss?.

Talbot continued to act on television into the 1980s. He also narrated at that time two televised PBS biographies, The Case of Dashiell Hammett (1982) and World Without Walls (1986) about pioneering female pilot Beryl Markham. Both PBS programs were produced and written by his son Stephen Talbot, a former child actor who portrayed the recurring character Gilbert Bates on Leave It to Beaver, another series on which his father performed in several episodes.

After his wife's death, Talbot moved to San Francisco, California, where both of his sons and their families lived. He died at home of congestive heart failure on March 2, 1996, at the age of 94. Talbot was remembered by SFGate as "a film and television actor who shared the screen with such legends as Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck." The Los Angeles Times recalled Talbot as a "versatile actor adept in every medium from tent shows to television...an actor who always worked."

He was survived by his children, three of whomStephen Talbot, David Talbot, and established careers in media production, writing, or journalism. Cynthia Talbot, Lyle's elder daughter, instead pursued a medical career, becoming a physician and later a residency director in Portland, Oregon.