Lyle Talbot #21

Lyle Talbot was the first Warner Bros. contract player to join the Screen Actors Guild. James Cagney, Bette Davis, William Powell, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young were among his fellow Warners contract players who would join in later months! Like James Gleason and Clay Clement (who recruited him to join the Guild), Lyle was a "child of the theatre." His father and step-mother were actors, and Lyle's father convinced him early of "...the principle of having unions, some way to back you if a manager was going to skip out and not pay your salary." Lyle began as a magician, but turned to acting and established his own company in Memphis, the Talbot Players. In 1928, he made an early 2-reeler "talkie" at Warner Bros. studio in Brooklyn with Pat O'Brien. In 1930, Warner Bros. signed him to a seven-year contract, beginning at $300 a week. Appreciating the salary and security of a contract player, but suffering first-hand the long, exhausting hours and work-week it entailed, this young leading man (who'd already played opposite Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Thelma Todd, and Loretta Young) needed little convincing from Clay Clement to join the small group of Guild founders.