Stephen Talbot

Stephen Henderson Talbot (born February 28, 1949, Los Angeles, California, United States) is an Emmy, DuPont and Peabody award-winning TV documentary producer, writer and reporter who has been a longtime contributor to PBS, especially the series FRONTLINE and FRONTLINE World, where he produced documentaries like "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy," "The Long March of Newt Gingrich" and "Justice for Sale." Before becoming a journalist and producer, Talbot was a busy television child actor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His father was the film, TV and stage actor Lyle Talbot.^[1]

As an actor, Steve is best known for his role in the iconic "baby boomer" TV series, Leave It to Beaver, in which he played "Gilbert Bates," friend of, "Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver" (Jerry Mathers).^[2] The character Gilbert was generally known to lure Beaver into mischief.

Talbot went on to become an accomplished "behind the scenes" contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service as a producer and writer for the Frontline series and as the series editor and a senior producer for FRONTLINE World. He has produced, written and reported over 40 documentaries for PBS, including biographies of fiction writers Dashiell Hammett, Ken Kesey, Carlos Fuentes, Maxine Hong Kingston and John Dos Passos. He began his career in broadcast journalism as a reporter and producer at KQED-TV in San Francisco, where he also contributed feature news stories to the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. He has also worked as a producer and senior producer for the Center for Investigative Reporting,^[3] and is currently a producer for ITVS and the series Independent Lens on PBS.

He was executive producer of the PBS music specials, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders," and an online series of music videos called, "Quick Hits."^[4]

Biography

Early life and career

Stephen Talbot (left) as Gilbert Bates in Leave it to Beaver with Jerry Mathers (center) as "the Beaver" and the late Stanley Fafara (right) as Hubert "Whitey" Whitney, circa 1962.

Talbot's first appearance as "Gilbert" on "Leave it to Beaver" was in a 1959 episode called "Beaver and Gilbert," where he plays a new kid in town who is prone to telling tall tales.^[5] Talbot's signature episode in the "Leave it to Beaver" series is "The School Picture" in which he (Gilbert) tricks the Beav into making a face during the annual class photo.^[6] In another memorable episode, "Long Distance Call," Gilbert convinces Beaver to place an expensive phone call to Los Angeles Dodgers pitching star Don Drysdale.^[7]

Having spent his early years in front of the cameras on Leave it to Beaver as "Gilbert Bates" (56 episodes), Talbot abandoned acting for a career as a journalist. In an article in Salon.com he looked back with a sense of humor about his past role.

"In the interests of historical accuracy I should say that, yes, Gilbert was a troublemaker and an occasional liar, but my character was certainly no Eddie Haskell – that leering teenage hypocrite who spoke unctuously to parents ('Well, hello Mrs. Cleaver, and how is young Theodore today?') and venomously to the Beav ('Hey, squirt, take a powder before I squash you like a bug')."! ^[8] "I have spent my adult life trying to conceal my Leave it to Beaver past or correcting the historical record. Either way the series has become inescapable. When I was a kid, I loved acting; in fact, I badgered my father and mother until they allowed me to work. But how could I have known as an innocent 9-year-old that I was taking part in a television program that would live on for 40 years as an icon for baby boomers? In the early '80s, I turned down an offer to revive my role as Gilbert in a dreadful Beaver reunion series. "I'm trying to establish myself as a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter," I explained to the producers. "I can't go back to being Gilbert!"^[8]

Talbot guest-starred on many television programs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Lassie, M Squad, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Blue Angels,Men Into Space, Lawman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, "Law of the Plainsman", The Donna Reed Show and The Lucy Show. He appeared in comedy sketches with Bob Newhart in the early '60s NBC variety program, "The Bob Newhart Show." Talbot played the role of "Ronnie Kramer" in the episode, "I Hit and Ran," of CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. Talbot also appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone.^[9]

In 1959, he was cast as Ab Martin, a grade-school pupil in the episode "The Twister" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Sugarfoot, with Will Hutchins in the title role. In the episode, he recites to his dying teacher, Roy Cantwell (Fred Beir) a part of Patrick Henry's 1775 address at St. Johns' Church. The "twister" in the title of the episode is a tornado that wipes out a western town.

In 1960, he played Jimmie Kendall, son of the title character in CBS's Perry Mason in the episode, "The Case of the Wandering Widow."

On stage, Talbot co-starred as "Sonny" in William Inge's, Dark at the Top of the Stairs with Marjorie Lord at the La Jolla Playhouse.

He also played Dick Clark's nephew in the first movie Clark ever acted in, Because They're Young (1960), a high school melodrama with Tuesday Weld and music by "rock 'n roller" Duane Eddy.

Adult career

As an adult, Talbot turned from acting to journalism and did not dwell on his "Leave It To Beaver" heritage, turning down numerous LITB "reunion" offers in order to be taken seriously as a reporter. But in recent years he has begun to reflect affectionately on his "Beaver" experience in articles and interviews and even in a Frontline documentary, "Diet Wars."^[10]

Talbot's many TV documentaries include two Peabody Award winners, Broken Arrow, about nuclear weapons accidents, and, The Case of Dashiell Hammett," a biography of the crime writer. Talbot has had a long association with the PBS series Frontline beginning with his documentary on the financing of the 1992 presidential campaign, "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy," which won a DuPont Award and continuing through 2007 with his documentary on the media, "News War: What's Happening to the News."

In 2002, Frontline's executive producer David Fanning named Talbot to be the series editor of Frontline World, Frontline's international news magazine show. Between 2002 and 2008, Talbot oversaw the editorial content of 30 hour-long television episodes and helped commission and supervise nearly 100 broadcast stories. Frontline World won the 2004 Overseas Press Club of America award for best international TV reporting. With colleague Sharon Tiller, Talbot also oversaw the Frontline World website and its Emmy Award- and Webby Award-winning online video series, Rough Cuts^[11]

He was also the creator and executive producer of Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, a music show for PBS with host Marco Werman, whose pilot episode aired in 2010. A second episode aired October 5, 2012. Talbot's Quick Hits music videos appear on the PBS Digital Studios YouTube channel, Sound Tracks presents Quick Hits.^[12]

He has executive produced a number of indie documentaries, including The Price of Sex, a documentary by director and photo journalist Mimi Chakarova about sex trafficking in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Chakarova won the 2011 Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York and the Daniel Pearl Award from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

From 2012-2014, Talbot was senior producer for video projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting in Emeryville, California, including feature news stories for the PBS Newshour, Univision, documentaries for KQED-TV in San Francisco ("Hunger in the Valley of Plenty") and a series of online documentary shorts, including "To Kill a Sparrow" about a forced marriage in Afghanistan, which was featured as a New York Times Video. At CIR, Talbot also led the editorial team that began and ran, "The I Files," the first investigative news channel on YouTube.com. Currently, Talbot is a producer for ITVS / Independent Lens (PBS) in San Francisco.

TV journalism

Frontline

Talbot has written and produced ten documentaries for the critically acclaimed PBS series, Frontline. He has worked with correspondents Robert Krulwich, Peter Boyer, Bill Moyers and Lowell Bergman, and he has also appeared as a correspondent in "Why America Hates the Press" and "Diet Wars".^[13]

In 2007 he produced, "What's Happening to the News" a 90-minute episode of the Frontline "News War" series. His other Frontline news documentaries include "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy", "The Heartbeat of America" (an investigation of General Motors), "Public Lands, Private Profits" (about gold mining on federal land in the West), "Rush Limbaugh's America",^[14] "The Long March of Newt Gingrich", "Why America Hates the Press", "Spying on Saddam",^[15] "Justice for Sale" with Bill Moyers,^[16] and "The Battle Over School Choice".

His "investigative biography" of Newt Gingrich – "The Long March of Newt Gingrich" (1995) with correspondent Peter Boyer – drew renewed interest and was posted with updates on the Frontline website in 2012 when Gingrich made his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination.^[17]

From 2002–2008, Talbot was the series editor and a senior producer for Frontline/World, the international TV news magazine program and website. With reporter Kate Seelye, he also produced a half-hour FRONTLINE/World story, "The Earthquake", about political turmoil in Lebanon and Syria.^[18] He was senior producer of the Emmy-winning FRONTLINE/World documentary by Gwynne Roberts, "Iraq: Saddam's Road to Hell," an investigation of a massacre of Kurds carried out by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Based at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Talbot and colleague Sharon Tiller taught classes and helped identify and mentor the "next generation of video journalists" whose work was showcased on Frontline/World.^[19]

KQED

In the 1980s, Talbot was a staff reporter and producer at KQED-TV, the PBS affiliate in San Francisco, where he produced local documentaries, as well as national PBS documentaries such as "Namibia: Behind the Lines," South Africa Under Siege (a portrait of Nelson Mandela's ANC in exile), and The Gospel and Guatemala (an investigation of presidential strongman Efrain Rios Montt and his US supporters) with Elizabeth Farnsworth. At KQED, Talbot also reported and produced dozens of feature stories for The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.

He has written and produced (or co-produced with Joan Saffa and Judy Flannery) several hour-long PBS biographies of noted writers, including: Dashiell Hammett, Ken Kesey, Beryl Markham,^[20] Carlos Fuentes,^[21][22] and Maxine Hong Kingston. He also produced and co-wrote a PBS biography of John Dos Passos^[23]

For KQED in 2001, he produced a one-hour documentary about Jerry Brown as mayor of Oakland, The Celebrity and the City.^[24] He had previously produced a KQED documentary about San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, "The Art of Being Mayor."

With David Davis, Talbot wrote and directed, The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation, a two-hour history special that aired nationally on PBS in 2005, and was based on his earlier film, 1968: The Year That Shaped a Generation.

Writings

His articles have appeared in Salon.com,^[25] the Washington Post Magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones,^[26] Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Talbot wrote about Robert Mugabe in an article for the Frontline/World website.^[27] He has written about his daughter's home birth, "Call the Midwife," for KQED's website ^[28] In the 1970s, he was a reporter and editor for Internews, a radio and print foreign news service based in Berkeley, California.

Awards

Talbot has won numerous awards for his broadcast journalism, including two national Emmy Awards, four local (San Francisco) Emmys, three Golden Gate Awards from the San Francisco International Film Festival, three Thomas M. Storke International Journalism Awards from the World Affairs Council of Northern California, two Peabody Awards, two DuPont-Columbia Journalism Silver Batons, a George Polk Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, a First Prize TV Award from the Education Writers Association, a National Press Club Arthur Rowse Award for media criticism, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He has been nominated three times for best documentary script writing by the Writers Guild of America.

Personal life

Stephen Talbot is the son of the late Lyle Talbot, a 1930s movie star and a veteran TV and stage actor. Stephen Talbot attended Harvard High School (now called Harvard-Westlake) in North Hollywood (class of 1966) and graduated in 1970 from Wesleyan University (Connecticut) where he was very active in anti-Vietnam war protests. He began making films about the anti-war movement, including March on Washington, DC III (about Vietnam Veterans Against the War), and Year of the Tiger (filmed in Vietnam).

After graduating from Wesleyan, Talbot worked from 1970-1973 at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, then an experimental college on Long Island. He began as assistant to the president John Maguire and went on to become a lecturer in the American Studies program.

Stephen Talbot lives in San Francisco with his wife, Pippa Gordon. They have a son, Dashiell, and a daughter, Caitlin. Talbot named his son Dashiell, now a deputy counsel for the County of Los Angeles, after San Francisco mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. His daughter, Caitlin, is an actress and yoga instructor, who graduated with an M.F.A. from American Conservatory Theater, in San Francisco.^[29] In 2015, he wrote a story reminiscing about the home birth of his daughter.^[30]

Talbot's sister, New Yorker magazine staffer Margaret Talbot, wrote The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Books, 2012), about their father, Lyle Talbot, and their family history.^[31] His brother, David, is the author of several books, including "Season of the Witch" about San Francisco in the '60s and '70s, and was the founder and original editor of Salon.com. His sister, Cynthia, is a medical doctor in Portland, Oregon.

Select filmography

See the complete Stephen Talbot filmography at IMDB

References

External links

• Stephen Talbot on IMDb
• The Talbot Players website
• "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders" website
• "Sound Tracks Presents Quick Hits" YouTube Channel
• "Price of Sex" film website
• "Frontline World" website
• "Frontline" website
• "The I Files" YouTube Channel
• [Center for Investigative Reporting website http://cironline.org/person/stephen-talbot]
• Current