Lyle Talbot

Lyle was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the only child of Florence May (née Talbot) and Joel Edward Henderson, both natives of Nebraska. In May 1902, just three months after Lyle's birth, Florence died at her mother's home in Brainard, Nebraska from complications attributed to typhoid fever. Lyle was then raised in Brainard by his widowed grandmother, Mary Talbot (nee Mary Hollywood), who legally changed her infant grandson's surname from Henderson to her own married name and added "Florenz" as his middle name in memory of her daughter. Later, as a teenager, Talbot moved with his grandmother to Omaha, Nebraska. There he graduated from high school before leaving home at age 17 to work as a hypnotist's assistant, part-time magician, and as an actor, entertaining audiences at traveling tent shows and in theatres across the American Midwest. After gaining years of stage experience in his travels, Talbot in 1929 established his own theatre company, "The Talbot Players", in Memphis, Tennessee, where he hired his father and stepmother, Anna Henderson, to be among the company's roster of performers. At the end of 1931, however, Talbot decided to move to California to find more lucrative acting opportunities in motion pictures. He already had some experience, though very limited, in performing on screen, namely in small roles in a few shorts, which included a bit part as a gangster in The Nightingale (1931) and playing a police captain in The Clyde Mystery (1931). Both of those low-budget, two-reel shorts were filmed in New York City and produced by Warner Bros. in affiliation with Vitaphone in Brooklyn.