Stephen Talbot

Stephen Henderson Talbot (born February 28, 1949) is an American TV documentary producer, reporter, writer, and longtime contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the series Frontline. His more than 40 documentaries include the Frontline episodes "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy", "Rush Limbaugh's America," "The Long March of Newt Gingrich", "Justice for Sale", and "News War: What's Happening to the News". Talbot has also written and produced PBS biographies of writers Dashiell Hammett, Beryl Markham, Ken Kesey, Carlos Fuentes, Maxine Hong Kingston and John Dos Passos. He was co-creator and executive producer of the PBS music specials, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, and an online series of music videos Quick Hits.[1]

Stephen Talbot
Talbot at UC Berkeley in 2007
Born
Stephen Henderson Talbot

(1949-02-28) February 28, 1949
Los Angeles, California, United States
Other namesSteve Talbot
Spouse(s)Pippa Gordon
Children2

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.[2] Talbot has also worked as a producer and senior producer for the Center for Investigative Reporting.[3]

Before becoming a journalist and documentary producer, Talbot was a television child actor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He is known for his role in the TV sitcom Leave It to Beaver, in which he played Gilbert Bates, friend of Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (Jerry Mathers).[4]

Early life and education

Born in Hollywood and raised in Studio City, California, Stephen Talbot is the son of Lyle Talbot, a film and TV actor, and Paula Talbot (born Margaret Epple).[5] Stephen Talbot graduated from Harvard High School (now called Harvard-Westlake) in 1966.[6] In 1970, he graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he studied English and film and was very active in anti-Vietnam war protests.[6] 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).[7] From 1970 to 1973, he worked at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury, then an experimental college on Long Island; he began as assistant to the school's president and subsequently became a lecturer in the American Studies program.

Acting career

Talbot's first appearance as Gilbert on Leave It to Beaver was in a 1959 episode called "Beaver and Gilbert", where he plays an insecure new kid in town who is prone to telling tall tales.[8] Early on in the series, the Gilbert character was someone constantly getting the hapless Beaver into trouble. In "The School Picture" (1961) Gilbert tricks Beaver into making a goofy face in a class photo. Afterwards, Gilbert tells Beaver, "I may be a dirty rat, but I'm not a dumb rat." But as the series went on Gilbert became a more genuine friend of the Beav, really his closest friend, as seen in episodes like "Beaver on TV" (1963) when Gilbert is the only one to believe Beaver had been on a local TV show (it had been taped for later broadcast, a new concept at the time).[9]

Talbot guest-starred on many television programs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including three episodes of Lassie." Talbot appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone: "Static" and "The Fugitive".[10] And 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".

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.

Talbot also appeared inM Squad, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Blue Angels, Men Into Space, Lawman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Law of the Plainsman, The Donna Reed Show, Mr. Novak 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 CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson episode "Hit and Run".

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 ward and 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.

Having spent his early years in front of the cameras in dozens of TV shows and 56 episodes of Leave It to Beaver as Gilbert Bates, Talbot abandoned acting for a career as a journalist. In an article for Salon.com in 1997, he looked back with a sense of humor about his past role on "Beaver":[11]

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").... 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."

More recently Talbot has reflected affectionately on his Beaver experience in articles and interviews and even in a Frontline documentary, "Diet Wars."[12] He wrote about Leave It to Beaver and becoming an anti-war activist for KQED's website.[6]

KQED

In the 1980s, Talbot was a staff reporter and producer at KQED-TV, the PBS affiliate in San Francisco.

Early in his career at KQED, Talbot produced two national PBS Peabody Award winners, Broken Arrow, about nuclear weapons accidents,[13] and The Case of Dashiell Hammett, a biography of the crime writer.[14]

During his time at KQED, Talbot 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 with Elizabeth Farnsworth (an investigation of Guatemala's presidential strongman Efraín Ríos Montt and his "born again" U.S. supporters).

He also wrote 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,[15] Carlos Fuentes,[16] and Maxine Hong Kingston.

At KQED, Talbot reported and produced dozens of feature news stories for The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.[2]

After leaving KQED in 1989, Talbot produced and co-wrote a PBS biography of John Dos Passos[17]

Talbot has returned to KQED over the years to produce documentary specials. In 1991, Talbot investigated the car bomb explosion in Oakland, California that nearly killed Earth First! environmentalist Judi Bari. His documentary, Who Bombed Judi Bari?, critiqued the FBI and Oakland police department charges against her and raised questions about who was responsible for placing the pipe bomb in her car.[18] Returning again to KQED in 2001, Talbot wrote and produced a one-hour documentary about Jerry Brown as mayor of Oakland, The Celebrity and the City.[19] He had previously produced a KQED documentary about San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, "The Art of Being Mayor."

Frontline

Talbot has had a long association with 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".

His other Frontline news documentaries include "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",[20] "The Long March of Newt Gingrich", "Why America Hates the Press", "Spying on Saddam",[21] "Justice for Sale",[22] and "The Battle Over School Choice".

His "investigative biography" of Newt Gingrich – "The Long March of Newt Gingrich" (1995) – drew renewed interest and was posted with updates on the Frontline website in 2012 when Gingrich made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination.[23]

In 2002, Frontline's executive producer David Fanning named Talbot as series editor of Frontline World, Frontline's international news magazine series.[24] Between 2002 and 2008, Talbot oversaw the editorial content of 30 hour-long television episodes and helped commission and supervise nearly 100 broadcast stories.

With colleague Sharon Tiller, Talbot also oversaw the Frontline World website and its Emmy Award and Webby Award-winning online video series, Rough Cuts[25]

Based at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, Talbot and Tiller taught classes and helped identify and mentor the "next generation of video journalists" whose work was showcased on Frontline/World.[25]

With reporter Kate Seelye, Talbot also produced a half-hour FRONTLINE/World story, "The Earthquake", about political turmoil in Lebanon and Syria.[26] 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.

Frontline World won the 2004 Overseas Press Club of America award for best international TV reporting.

Sound Tracks

Talbot was the co-creator and executive producer of Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, a music show for PBS with host Marco Werman and reporters Alexis Bloom, Arun Rath and Mirissa Neff. The pilot episode presented by Oregon Public Broadcasting aired in 2010 with stories about the Russian propaganda song "A Man Like Putin," Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, and Borat music composer Erran Baron Cohen, and a performance by fado singer Mariza.[27]

A second one-hour episode hosted by KQED aired nationally in 2012 with Wynton Marsalis, Youssou N'Dour, Julie Fowlis and Of Monsters and Men.[28]

Talbot was also the executive producer of a series of twenty Sound Tracks online music videos for PBS Digital and YouTube, including interviews with and performances by Levon Helm, Yuja Wang, Hélène Grimaud, KT Tunstall, Seun Kuti, Seu Jorge, Anoushka Shankar and Of Monsters and Men.[29]

Writing

Talbot's articles have appeared in Salon.com,[30] the Washington Post Magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones,[31] Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Talbot wrote about meeting and interviewing Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe in an article, "From Liberator to Tyrant," for the Frontline/World website.[32]

In the 1970s, he was a reporter, writer and editor for Internews, a radio and print foreign news service based in Berkeley, California.

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and freelance production

In addition to his work for KQED and Frontline, Talbot over the years has produced, written or directed a number of specials for PBS, as well as producing long and short-form videos for the Center for Investigative Reporting.

For Oregon Public Broadcasting and PBS, Talbot wrote and directed with David Davis, 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 (1998).

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.[33]

Talbot wrote the one-hour political biography, Moscone: A Legacy of Change (2018), about San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, "the people's mayor," who was assassinated along with gay Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978.[34]

From 2012 to 2014, Talbot was senior producer for video projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting, including feature news stories and short documentaries for the PBS Newshour, Univision, KQED-TV in San Francisco and The New York Times. At CIR, Talbot also led the editorial team that created and ran "The I Files", the first investigative news channel on YouTube.com.

Since 2015, Talbot has been senior producer for documentary shorts at ITVS / Independent Lens (PBS) in San Francisco.

In 2019 Talbot began co-writing and co-producing with Christine Ni the Bay Area NBC series Bay Area Revelations, narrated by Peter Coyote, starting with the episodes "Exploring Space"[35] and "Loma Prieta Earthquake, 30 Years Later"[36] and continuing in 2020 with "Female Sports Icons"[37] and "Riding the Waves" about surfing in Northern California.[38]

Personal life

Stephen Talbot lives in San Francisco with his wife, Pippa Gordon, a medical social worker. They named their son Dashiell, now an attorney, after San Francisco mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. Their daughter, Caitlin, graduated with an M.F.A. from American Conservatory Theater, in San Francisco.[39] In 2015, he wrote a story, "Call the Midwife", reminiscing about the home birth of his daughter.[40]

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.[41] His brother, David, is the author of several books, including Season of the Witch about San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the founder and original editor of Salon.com. His sister, Cynthia, is a medical doctor in Portland, Oregon. His nephew, Joe Talbot, won the Best Director prize at Sundance for his debut feature film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019).

Awards

Talbot has won numerous awards for his broadcast journalism, including two national News and Documentary Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, two DuPont-Columbia Journalism Silver Batons, a George Polk Award, five regional (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, 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.

Select filmography
See the complete Stephen Talbot filmography at IMDB
YearTitleRole
1959–1963Leave It to Beaver
56 episodes (TV)		Gilbert Bates
1960Perry Mason
"The Case of the Wandering Widow" (TV)		Jimmie Kendall
1961The Twilight Zone
"Static" (TV)		The Boy
1962The Twilight Zone
"The Fugitive" (TV)		Howie
1980"Broken Arrow: Can a Nuclear Weapons Accident Happen Here?"
(TV)		Reporter, Co-Producer
1982The Case of Dashiell Hammett
(TV)		Writer
Producer
1984–85The Gospel and Guatemala
(TV)		Reporter, Co-Producer
1986"World Without Walls: Beryl Markham's African Memoir" (TV)Writer, Co-Producer
1987"Further! Ken Kesey's American Dreams"
(TV)		Writer, Co-Producer
1989Crossing Borders: The Journey of Carlos Fuentes
(TV)		Writer, Co-Producer
1992Frontline
"The Best Campaign Money Can Buy" (TV)		Producer
1993Frontline
"The Heartbeat of America" (TV)		Producer
1994Frontline
"Public Lands, Private Profits" (TV)		Producer
1994Frontline
"Rush Limbaugh's America" (TV)		Producer, Co-Writer
1995Frontline
"The Long March of Newt Gingrich" (TV)		Producer, Co-Writer
1996Frontline
"Why America Hates the Press" (TV)		Correspondent, Producer
1999Frontline
"Spying on Saddam" (TV)		Producer
1999Frontline
"Justice for Sale" (TV)		Producer, Co-Writer
2000Frontline
"Battle Over School Choice" (TV)		Producer, Writer
2001"The Celebrity and the City" (Jerry Brown as mayor of Oakland)
KQED (TV)		Producer, Writer
2002–2008Frontline
"Frontline World" (TV) 30 episodes		Series Editor, Senior Producer
2004Frontline
"Diet Wars" (TV)		Host
2005The Sixties: The Years That Shaped
a Generation (TV)		Co-Producer
2007Frontline
"News War: What's Happening to the News" (TV)		Producer, Co-Writer
2010, 2012"Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders"
(TV) PBS		Executive Producer
2011The Price of Sex
(film)		Executive Producer
2013"To Kill a Sparrow"
(short film)		Senior Producer
2015"Daisy and Max"
Al Jazeera America		Executive Producer
2018"Moscone: A Legacy of Change" (TV) PBSWriter
2019"Bay Area Revelations: Loma Prieta Earthquake, 30 Years Later" (TV)Co-Producer, Co-Writer
2020"Bay Area Revelations: Riding the Waves" (TV)Co-Producer, Co-Writer

References
  1. "'Sound Tracks' proposed for PBS, 2011". Current.org. September 19, 2011. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  2. "Search Results: Stephen Talbot". American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  3. "Biography: Stephen Talbot". The Center for Investigative Reporting.
  4. Terrace, Vincent (2011). Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010 (2nd ed.). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 591. ISBN 978-0-7864-6477-7.
  5. Gussow, Mel (March 5, 1996). "Lyle Talbot, 94, Charactor [sic] Actor And TV Neighbor". The New York Times. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  6. Talbot, Stephen (October 1, 2017). "The Day the Beaver Died: Reflections on Becoming an Anti-War Activist". KQED.
  7. www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/15/steve-talbots-cinematic-anti-war-hymns-leave-it-to-beaver-actor-goes-behind-the-camera
  8. Leave It to Beaver episode "Beaver and Gilbert" at IMDb
  9. Leave It to Beaver episode "Beaver on TV" at IMDb
  10. "Stephen Talbot". IMDb. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  11. Talbot, Stephen (August 23, 1997). "Living Down Beaver". Salon. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  12. "Confessions Of A Frontline Dieter | Diet Wars". Frontline. PBS. April 8, 2004. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  13. "("Search Results for 'Broken Arrow'")". Peabody Awards. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia. Archived from the original on July 18, 2018. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
  14. "Current Affairs: The Case of Dashiell Hammett". Peabody Awards. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia. Archived from the original on July 18, 2018. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
  15. Mitgang, Herbert (October 8, 1986). "TV REVIEWS - 'World Without Walls,' About Beryl Markham". The New York Times. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  16. Gerard, Jeremy (October 5, 1989). "Fuentes in a TV Film, On Life and Himself". The New York Times. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  17. Goodman, Walter (August 5, 1994). "TV WEEKEND; Rediscovering a 30's Novelist Who Touched a Generation". The New York Times.
  18. Koehler, Robert (June 4, 1991). "'Who Bombed Bari?' Uncovers New Evidence". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  19. Talbot, Stephen (June 5, 2014). "No 2nd acts in politics? 4 clips that look back on Jerry Brown's career". Center for Investigative Reporting. Archived from the original on January 22, 2016. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  20. Goodman, Walter (February 28, 1995). "What Makes Rush Limbaugh Tick So Loudly". The New York Times. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  21. Goodman, Walter (April 27, 1999). "From Alpha Dog to Wound-Licking in Iraq". The New York Times. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  22. "Video: The Journal: Justice For Sale | Watch Bill Moyers Online |". PBS Video. February 19, 2010. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  23. Sarah Moughty (December 19, 2011). "The Long March of Newt Gingrich: Part One | The Long March of Newt Gingrich". Frontline. PBS. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  24. "Frontline Takes a 'World' View in New PBS Series Premiering Thursday, May 23". PBS. April 7, 2002.
  25. Heidi Benson (October 11, 2007). "'Frontline/World' video journalists bring world to Web". San Francisco Chronicle.
  26. "Lebanon - The Earthquake". FRONTLINE/WORLD. PBS. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  27. Cushing, Ellen (January 20, 2010). "With Sound Tracks, PBS Appeals to Music Fans". East Bay Express. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  28. Wiegand, David (October 2, 2012). "'Sound Tracks' review: World of musical riches". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  29. Stephen Talbot's channel on YouTube
  30. "Stephen Talbot". Salon.com. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  31. "Carlos Fuentes: The Mother Jones Interview". Mother Jones.
  32. "Zimbabwe - Shadows and Lies: Recollections of Robert Mugabe". FRONTLINE/WORLD. PBS. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  33. "The Price of Sex: An Investigation of Sex Trafficking". PriceOfSex.org.
  34. "Moscone: A Legacy of Change - KVIE Documentaries". PBS.
  35. Ni, Christine (June 3, 2019). "Bay Area Revelations: Exploring Space". NBC Bay Area. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  36. "Loma Prieta Earthquake, 30 Years Later". NBC Bay Area. October 14, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  37. "Female Sports Icons". NBC Bay Area. January 24, 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  38. "Riding the Waves". NBC Bay Area. April 11, 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  39. Steven Winn (August 15, 2001). "Acting up / ACT's Young Conservatory students have the passion and talent to make it". San Francisco Chronicle.
  40. Talbot, Stephen (January 28, 2015). "Call the Midwife: A Home Birth Story". KQED.
  41. Talbot, Margaret (November 8, 2012). The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century. ISBN 978-1594487064.
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