Stephen Talbot

February 28, 1949

Stephen Henderson Talbot is a TV documentary producer, actor, writer and reporter. Talbot directed and produced "The Movement and the 'Madman' " for the PBS series American Experience in 2023. He is a longtime contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and worked for over 16 years for the series Frontline. Before becoming a journalist and documentary producer, Talbot was a television child actor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He is best 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). Talbot's more than 40 documentaries include the Frontline films "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.