George Bancroft (September 30, 1882 – October 2, 1956) was an American film actor, whose career spanned seventeen years from 1925 to 1942. He was cast in many notable films alongside major film stars throughout his Hollywood years. Early years Bancroft was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1882. He attended Tomes Institute in Port Deposit, Maryland. Maritime work After working on merchant marine vessels at age 14, Bancroft was an apprentice on and later served on and West Indies. Additionally, during the Battle of Manila Bay (1898), he was a gunner on . During his days in the Navy, he staged plays aboard ship. In 1900, he swam underneath the hull of the battleship to check the extent of the damage after it struck a rock off the coast of China. For this, he was appointed to the United States Naval Academy, but found it too restrictive for his tastes and left to pursue a theatrical career. Acting career In 1901, Bancroft began acting in earnest, as he toured in plays and had juvenile leads in musical comedies. In vaudeville, he did blackface routines and impersonated celebrities. His Broadway credits include the musical comedies Cinders (1923) and The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923). One of his early films was The Journey's End (1921). Bancroft's first starring role was in The Pony Express (1925), and the next year he played an important supporting role in a cast including Wallace Beery, Charles Farrell and Esther Ralston in the period naval widescreen epic Old Ironsides (1926), then went from historical pictures to the gritty world of the underground in Paramount Pictures productions such as von Sternberg's Underworld (1927) and The Docks of New York (1928). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929 for Thunderbolt, played the title role in The Wolf of Wall Street (1929, released just prior to the Wall Street Crash), and appeared in Paramount's all-star revue Paramount on Parade (1930) and Rowland Brown's Blood Money (1933), condemned by the censors because they feared the film would "incite law-abiding citizens to crime." Bancroft had enjoyed his career height in silent pictures and none of his early sound films in which he played the lead had the same impact. Reportedly, he refused to fall down on set after a prop revolver was fired at him, saying "Just one bullet can't stop Bancroft!". By 1934, he had slipped