Lyle Talbot — Let Me Be a Man for a Change (1935) 🇺🇸

Lyle Talbot (left) with Valerie Hobson and Hugh O'Connell in Chinatown Squad (1935) | www.vintoz.com

April 06, 2023

"I'm tired of being 'The guy seen with so-and-so. I'm tired of being Hollywood's sleek-haired little play-boy written up monthly as engaged to this woman or that.'

by Jewel Smith

"I'm disgusted with myself for letting the world think all I'm good for is to escort ladies to night clubs and buy them engagement rings. I'm through making myself seem what I'm not, on the screen or off. A lover's all right in his place. All men are lovers at times. But men are men despite women rather than because of them. I know I'm a man, and I'm going to be one on the screen and off, for a change. Just give me a chance to show you!"

Lyle Talbot's eyes blazed as he poured out this tirade to me across the luncheon table at Warners-First National Studios. I laughed, I laughed because I knew how few people would believe him. Most writers would have said, "Hollywood bologna. Another gag for another story," and let it go at that, I would have, too, if most men had poured out such a tale.

I’m afraid it's going to sound like a press-agent story. I'm afraid my editor isn't going to believe what I have to say about Lyle Talbot. So I'm going to tell you right now, this is a press-agent story, for I was once in that capacity for Lyle!

And because I was his press-agent, I believed him. In fact, I knew all about it long before he told me. I've wondered for months how long it would be before he blew up at playing sleek lover's roles, on the screen and off. I've wondered if he was going to ride along forever upon the publicity he'd created for himself by actually letting himself become known as Hollywood's most famous ladies' man, play-boy unexcelled around town.

I suppose the world knows very little about the relations between a motion picture actor and his press agent. It's one of our untold stories, and I have little room to go into it here. But there's a close bond between the actor and the person he pays to both publicize and protect him. There has to be, because the press agent must know the truth about his client. And he must understand that truth with a humanness and a to-be-trusted spirit or he does not remain long a press agent. An actor always trusts his press agent to know all and tell only what will help create illusions.

While I was acting in this capacity for Lyle Talbot, I did many, many stories about his Hollywood personality. I learned the truth about his real one. I could not tell it. then. He was not ready for it. He had made up his mind there was only one way to become known quickly in pictures — through women. He had made five tests in New York and failed in each of them. He had come to Hollywood on his own and managed to get started. He had studied each man and how he had risen to fame. There was Gary Cooper. He'd discovered that Gary's name became a household word before his pictures had even been seen on the screen because his name had been linked with Clara Bow's, Evelyn Brent's, Lupe Vélez' and that long list of others. He'd seen how Gilbert Roland had become an international figure... how women had helped to build Valentino, George Brent, George Raft, Harry Richman, Joel McCrea, Richard Dix, Max Baer, Adolphe Menjou, etc. He knew that being seen with one glamorous Hollywood woman after another meant international publicity and fame, long before a man could prove himself an actor. He'd gone into the game as had so many before him.

And I used to wonder if he'd stop in time. For a man may fall from fame on the very ladder he uses to create it. Look over the list of men I've just named and you'll understand exactly. It has been written many times that Rudy Valentino really passed away just in time. The world was weary of reading about his being just a ladies' man and was ready to turn to a new romantic hero. Incidentally, Rudy knew that. He felt defeat approaching from the fair hands that had made him famous. Yet he could not change a world's mind.

Gary Cooper did change it. Others have. Would Lyle Talbot? How often I had wondered. And it was when I read he'd gone to Warner Brothers and demanded the lead in "The Brute," that he-man picture that contributed to Milton Sills' fame years ago, that I dashed right out to ask him if he'd really awakened in time and was going to be himself at last.

Lyle Talbot is a true man's man. How often I've wanted to write those little truths about him to prove it. And yet I didn't dare because what is good publicity for a man's man is not for a ladies' man!

Take the day he saved Margaret Lindsay's life while they were making "Fog Over Frisco." She was wearing a flimsy white dress and someone carelessly threw a lighted match against her. She was in flames in a second, but, in less than a second, while the rest of the men, from prop boy to director, were thinking what to do, Lyle Talbot had his coat off and had rolled Margaret Lindsay on the floor in it. She hardly was scarred and anyone present, I was there, too, will tell you his quick wit and courage saved that girl's life, to say nothing of her beauty.

Could we print it as a story of courage? Certainly not! Lyle Talbot was a ladies' man. He began taking Margaret Lindsay places. He had saved her life and that commenced a romance. He capitalized willingly upon an incident of true bravery as one of romantic import. A part of his Hollywood campaign as he had figured it out from the very beginning.

I have sat for hours and listened to incidents from his life story. I have read his life stories as printed and laughed aloud. The perfect build-up for a ladies' man when, in reality, he was a daredevil from the very beginning.

When his school teacher had hay-fever, he bought some powder that would make her sneeze, put it on an eraser and patted it on the blackboard behind her. She was in bed for several days, and Lyle got a good whipping. But he could take it — he'd had his fun.

Eventually he got tired of that cat o' nine tails because he was always caught. So he decided to do away with it, he buried it where nobody could find it. And the moment that it was gone, there was no real reason to be courageous.

When he left home at seventeen, it wasn't necessary. A ladies' boy would have stayed around home in nice, cozy comfort, but Lyle preferred to take the road. He wanted to become an actor. He wanted to begin young because he figured you could stand starvation better when the blood of youth could make even starvation an adventure. He found it. On his "first night," while playing the old man in a wandering stock company in "Cappy Ricks," he had stage fright so badly he forgot to pull his punch and actually knocked the leading man out. Of course, he was fired. But he begged to be allowed to remain with the company — begged so hard they retained him as the stage hand who swept the theatre and cleaned up the actors' dressing rooms. He could take that, too, with all his dreams of fame! Hard as nails from the beginning.

Eventually, of course, one of the actors became ill and since there was no one else, he was given a second opportunity. At the end of three years, when that company folded, he was exactly where he started. No money. He could have gone home. A sissy would have. He didn't. He became a ballyhoo man at the "Hoopla" stand for a carnival.

There was a fire in that show, too. Lyle was in the tent with one old man. The next show was about to start when he saw flames. He knew what a fire meant to a carnival. If he yelled, there would be panic. There were buckets of water standing ready for the players — wash buckets. First he clapped his hands over the old man's mouth to keep him from giving the alarm, then releasing him, he put out the fire, alone, with their coats and the water from the buckets.

All this time, there were no women. A he-man — no time for women. But there was one eventually, a dancer. Perhaps you have read a little about her. But I wonder if anyone has read the true story. Romantic? Of course. Love stories are always romantic. But romance wasn't what I sensed when he told me about it. Rather bravery and determination.

They loved madly. So madly that I wonder if Fate, who seems to stack the cards for or against us, wasn't just a little jealous of this divine love. I sometimes think that when people are too happy they simply magnetize tragedy. These two did. When happiness had crooned its sweetest lyrics for only a short time, Lyle lost his position. She was dancing. They had no money. He could not get a job near her.

What to do? He could give up his career as an actor and get something else. But that would mean regrets later. They could separate and work in separate cities. But that meant tempting a happiness so great that neither could bear to think of it. What would a man do in such a situation?

A man faced the facts. Faced them with a heart so heavy, but a courage so great that I have never heard a story exactly its equal. They would separate — legally. They would go their own separate ways, remembering bliss, before separation or sacrifice of his career and pride, brought disillusionment. And when he was able to support her, they would marry again. They would not spoil marriage, but they would give it a second chance when he had proven his ability to provide for it, forever.

Women! A ladies' man! I remember I cried when Lyle Talbot first told me that story. "I have always loved one woman," he told me. "I have hoped against hope for that second marriage."

So I'd write about his romances with other girls, about his big cars, his purchase of orchids and champagne dinners for the ladies, with both a tear and a smile in my eye. And I didn't feel sorry for the other women, either. Because I knew he'd told them about it. A man would!

I knew he'd made them understand — Sally Blane, Genevieve Tobin, Claire Trevor, Mary Brian, Billie Seward, Margaret Lindsay, Patricia Ellis. One of them told me, "I like to go out with Lyle Talbot because he never tries to maul me. There's nothing synthetic about him — he'd have to mean it." How many men can she say that about?

But could I print that a girl was safe with a man who was building a reputation for being a sheik? Could I say that the most-engaged man in motion pictures was merely a companion, and a pal for pretty ladies? Could I tell the truth and remain his press agent?

I couldn't even tell his best friends, Pat O’Brien and Joe E. Brown — men's men if you ever saw one. I couldn't explain that between pictures Lyle dashed to the mountains with men pals, that he was an adroit fisherman and skillful sailor. I couldn't write that a ladies' man left the ladies on his holiday.

But then I learned that he had demanded The Brute; that he'd refused to play any more namby-pamby heroes until he'd played some he-men.

His. eyes kept right on blazing as he continued talking to me. "I've served my apprenticeship, Jewel. If I don't cut out this rot about being a sissy ladies' man, I'll end up a Hollywood gigolo. You take an awful gamble when you start that rep. I knew it then. I know it now. It's a gamble when you try to get out of it, too. People think it's a gag. You've pulled one gag, probably you're pulling another.

"However, spill the beans, now. Be a sport and make them believe it. You see, my ex-wife is coming to Hollywood soon. We're going to talk things over —"

I hope this helps do the trick, Lyle. There's something so heart-warming about a man who plays the game to win, with the knowledge he may lose. He's done it throughout his life. He's doing it now — with his career and his one Woman.

"Let me be a man for a change," he leaned forward.

And I answered, as I could have answered few men about whom I've written publicity, "There'll be no change, Lyle Talbot."