Word: bancrofts
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...search for the elusive almost mythical Garbo comprises the plot for Garbo Talks, a new film by director Sidney Lumet. Unfortunately it's not the fiesty Bancroft who embarks on the search, but instead her son, played by Ron Silver, whose screen presence can be likened to a lost beagle. All the time he is on the screen, which is all too often, Silver seems to get lost in Lumet's white washed urban setting. Only when Bancroft appears does Garbo Talks regain its force and almost all of it's humor...
However whenever Bancroft is onscreen, Lumet's dallying film becomes rejuvenated. Although Bancroft must combat a simple script, her throaty voice, and earthy no-nonsense approach to living and dying, make her character a truly endearing woman. In her small hospital room, she watches the Knicks, reads about the labor movement and encourages her nurse to fight for a contract...
Although the Garbo stand-in has a mysterious aura,(she remains faceless during the sequence), her meeting with Bancroft is anti-climatic. Bancroft, however, manages to pull it off for both of them, as her dying Estelle describes everything in her own decisively realistic terms. "I went to Paris too", she tells the movie goddess, "only you went with Aristotle Onassis and I went with the B'Nai Brith tour...
Except for Bancroft's forceful presence, the film remains as intangible as the great Garbo herself...
...book also won the Bancroft Prize for distinction in American History just two weeks ago, bringing Starr $4000 in prize money...