Word: bancroft
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...fourth largest industry in America has long treasured the erroneous idea that George Bancroft is a "mighty star." Years ago he appeared with Evelyn Brent in a thing called "Underworld" which was undeniably good, but that was a long time ago. Since then he has shouldered his way along, smashing chairs, threatening women, killing men with his fists, breaking banks, and appearing in movies with such robust titles as "The Wolf of Wall Street." He has become very much of a ham actor. In his last work, hailed as a mighty picture by a mighty star, the producers have made...
...that can be, and has been, done well, but never by the movies. It requires a delicacy of touch, a sympathy of treatment which Hollywood has seldom acquired. For the movies a character is all wool, or he is the worst shoddy that ever was carted through mill door. Bancroft disregards any opportunities the directors might give him. He bellows, he swaggers, he is the usual rugged George gone amuck...
...direction is utterly puerlle and lacking in delicacy. There are scenes of Mr. Bancroft bellowing a prayer to heaven in the pouring rain upon the death of his son, there is a long scene of his wife dying in child birth, there are innumerable maudlin, sentimental shots which have no place in any picture and when laid on with the trowel of Mr. Bancroft they become unthinkable...
...Bennett case had its roots in an antipathy between Tsar Landis and Club-owner Ball. A close friend of the late Byron Bancroft ("Ban") Johnson, Mr. Ball objected strongly in 1921 when Mr. Johnson and the other two members of the National Commission were deposed to make room for the Advisory Council, headed by Tsar Landis. A few years later he saw what he thought was a chance to settle a grudge. A mediocre outfielder named Fred Bennett, on whose services the St. Louis Club held a contract (which, like every player's contract, gave Club-owner Ball...
Rich Man's Folly (Paramount), supposed to have been suggested by Dickens' Dombey & Son, is an earnest but stodgy study of a gloomy man of business (George Bancroft). An irascible and exaggerated enthusiasm for his shipbuilding concern makes him, at first, a monster. He wants nothing but a son to carry on his name and when his wife dies, in furnishing him with one, he shows a callous gratification. The story plods on, a pony with the manners of a percheron, while the son dies (of a cold caught at a ship's christening), while the shipbuilder...