[3] His long career is recounted in the 2012 book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century by his youngest daughter Margaret Talbot, a staff writer for The New Yorker.

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.

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).

[9][11] Talbot's arrival in California at the beginning of 1932 proved to be ideal timing, for Hollywood was still in the formative years of the sound era, when studios remained busy searching for potential leading actors who were not only engaging performers, but also had acceptable voices and articulate speech patterns for the early audio technologies being used and refined on film sets.

[13] Talbot quickly accepted Zanuck's offer to join the company's growing ranks of contract players, who included the rising stars Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.

[c] In its July 9, 1932 review of Unholy Love, the popular journal Motion Picture Herald encourages theater owners and prospective audiences to direct special attention on three performers in the film: "Don't overlook Beryl Mercer and Ivan Lebedeff, as well as Lyle Talbot, "whom Warner Brothers are grooming for stellar roles.

[2][15] Early in his career at Warner Bros., Talbot took part in one of Hollywood's most extravagant and ambitious publicity events, a five-week rail trip in 1933 across the United States with Bette Davis, Preston Foster, Leo Carrillo, Glenda Farrell, cowboy star Tom Mix, Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm, comedian Joe E. Brown, and a chorus line of Busby Berkeley dancers.

The established studio celebrities and rising stars and personnel traveled aboard "The 42nd Street Special," a passenger train that was elaborately decorated in silver and gold leaf and trimmed with electric lights.

He's a quiet, unassuming young man with a bright Irish wit,[e] who lives alone in a modest flat with his dog, likes golf and tennis and goes bicycle riding every chance he gets.

He cares little for publicity ballyhoo and wants to spread his career out over a period of years, rather than have it burst into a sudden skyrocket of flame and then die out...He's five feet, eleven and a half inches tall; weighs 172 pounds, has brown hair and blue eyes that a girl would give anything to possess.

[19][f]Back in Hollywood after the 1933 publicity tour and working long hours six days a week, Talbot in July 1933 decided to become a member of the first board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild.

[21] He seldom received starring roles again, although he continued to find steady work as a capable character actor, often playing the "other man", affable neighbors, or crafty villains with equal finesse.

[21] Talbot's supporting roles spanned the gamut, as he played cowboys, pirates, detectives, street cops, surgeons, psychiatrists, soldiers, judges, newspaper editors, storekeepers, and boxers.

Having started his career in the theatre and later co-starred on Broadway in 1940–1941 in Separate Rooms with Glenda Farrell and Alan Dinehart, Talbot returned to the stage in the 1960s and 1970s, starring in national road company versions of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker with Ann B. Davis; Gore Vidal's The Best Man with Hugh Marlowe and K.T.

Stevens; Neil Simon's The Odd Couple with Harvey Stone and Barefoot in the Park with Virginia Mayo; Arthur Sumner Long's play Never Too Late with Penny Singleton; and appearing as Captain Brackett in a 1967 revival of South Pacific at (Lincoln Center) starring Florence Henderson and Giorgio Tozzi.

[27] Some examples of other series on which Talbot made guest appearances include Annie Oakley; It's a Great Life; The Public Defender; The Pride of the Family; Crossroads; Hey, Jeannie!

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.

Talbot had many romantic entanglements and several brief marriages to Elaine Melchoir (1930), Marguerite Cramer (1937–1940), Abigail Adams (1942), and Keven "Eve" McClure (1946–1947) who next married novelist Henry Miller.

[35] He 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.