about his early life and personal preferences, right down to his "cheap socks": SAG and later films 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. His activism in SAG union affairs reportedly hurt his career. In 1936, Warner Bros. dropped his contract, which immediately affected Talbot's acting opportunities. 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. Talbot's supporting roles spanned the gamut, as he played cowboys, pirates, detectives, street cops, surgeons, psychiatrists, soldiers, judges, newspaper editors, storekeepers, and boxers. In reflecting on his career during a 1984 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he stated, "'It's really simple, I never turned down a job, not one...ever.'" Such universal acceptance of acting offers led to his performing in, as Talbot himself described them in the same Times interview, "'some real stinkers'". Those films include three by Ed Wood that are now distinguished in American cinematic history for their extraordinarily low production values: Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and a motion picture often cited by media reviewers as the "'worst film ever made'", Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Talbot also worked with the Three Stooges in Gold Raiders (1951) and played villains in four comedies with The Bowery Boys. Talbot was notable too for being the first live-action actor to play two prominent DC Comics characters on-screen: Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin, and supervillain Lex Luthor in Atom Man vs. Superman (who at the time was simply known as Luthor). Talbot began a longstanding tradition of actors in these roles that were most recently (as of 2022) filled by Jeffrey Wright and Jesse Eisenberg, respectively. In 1960, after an absence of more than 20 years, Talbot returned to the Warner Bros. big screen, appearing in the Franklin D. Roosevelt bio-pic, Sunrise at Campobello written by Dore Schary and starring Ralph Bellamy. It was Talbot's penultimate film appearance. Return to the stage 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