The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century Tapa dura - 2012

“Sharp and engaging . . . Talbot père comes across as a sort of Zelig-with-personality, a life-embracing man whose career spans, and illuminates, the first 60 years of the 20th century.”—The New York Times Book Review

"A well-researched and clear-eyed history of the early American entertainment industry told through the perspective of a Zelig-like figure who worked with everyone from Shirley Temple to Mae West to Ed Wood. Talbot fille draws from historical sources as well as her own recollection, and the result is less a walk down memory lane than a gateway to a bygone era."—Entertainment Weekly

“Margaret Talbot’s wry, wonderful new book . . . That Talbot is a writer gifted enough to evoke not just images but their attendant music through her words will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read her in The New Yorker or elsewhere. One of the things The Entertainer makes abundantly clear, though, is that she comes by her aesthetic sense naturally. . . . Talbot has woven a tale as romantic and vivid as any film could hope to be, while still seeing every bit of it plain. She is as clear-eyed about her father as she is about history—no easy feat. . . . [Lyle] never had even a starring role as dazzling as the one his youngest child, with history as her guide, has now written for him.”—Slate

"In The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century, New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot succeeds at what Hollywood failed to do for her father: She makes him a star. . . . Talbot employs novelistic style in bringing this period to life . . . [and] vividly imagines her way into her father's world. . . . Lyle Talbot had one humdinger of a life story."—Los Angeles Times

"A tender but clear-eyed portrait  . . . Like Lyle, this book is substantial but never heavy, with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the things that make life fun. While it may be true that Lyle Talbot 'led a resolutely unexamined life,' his daughter has written a story that gets to the heart of one of America’s luckier, happier sons."—Boston Globe

“Talbot, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has also accomplished something unusual. There are many books about actors written by their children. This may be the only one that's as much a century-spanning cultural history as a charming, affectionate tribute. . . . Talbot brings '30s Tinseltown to radiant life.”—Newsday

"Deliciously written . . .  [a] gleaming tribute of a book."—More

"A frolicking, applause-worthy memoir."—Good Housekeeping

"New Yorker staff writer Talbot debuts with an affectionate biography of her father, stage, screen and TV actor Lyle Talbot. Mingling memoir and relevant social and cultural history, the author shows how her father’s career in many ways paralleled the changes in the 20th-century entertainment industry. . . . A thorough, lovingly researched paean to a father and a way of life."—Kirkus

“What a wonderful, loving, beautifully researched and touching story this is! Lyle Talbot lived a charmed life—a player's life—from the final days of vaudeville to the golden years of American television. Somehow through it all (the glamour, the hardship, the stardom, the rejection and the many transformations of modernity) he comported himself with a dignity that feels very much out of time to a contemporary reader. His daughter's tender yet clear-headed remembrance of him is a gift and a treasure—and a top-notch documentation of Hollywood history, besides.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

“Some people are born storytellers. Some people are born with a story to tell. Margaret Talbot is both. The Entertainer is a gorgeously detailed and relentlessly inventive portrait of her father's adventures in 1930s Hollywood and on the home front.”—Karen Abbot, author of Sin in the Second City