Talk:George Bancroft (actor)

Source problem
It is a little hard to review the key points of an article that has no key points and has no encyclopedic or credible references. The "sources" are entirely Internet movie columns. They supply a list of his movies, which is probably accurate, as that is what they write about, but for his early life, nothing. They venture a conjecture or two totally unsubstantiated. I would call this list a non-article, unless you want to make a list article of it.

Let's take, for example, this paragraph:

"During his early days as a sailor, he staged plays onboard ship. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy as a commissioned officer, but left the Navy after his enlistment was completed to become a blackface song and dance comedian in revue."

The author gives us a picture of unemployed shipboard sailors hanging around waiting to stage plays or form other useful capital enterprises aboard this unemployed sailor's home generously provided to them by the US government. So much for his early days as a sailor. If we suppose he was already an ensign, perhaps he utilized his time between volleys to entertain the battle-weary sailors with black-face routine, singing and dancing over the quarterdeck like Fred Astair in the song "Dancing in the Rain." This whole paragraph has the ripe odor of Hollywood horsemanure (that is what they do for a living, act out fantasy for entertainment) and without it there is nothing at all except the movie list. As to whether he ever went to the Academy, or for how long, or exactly what the term "enlistment" should mean, we do not know, and, apparently, neither do the WP editors. So, how can we either summarize or know what categories to put him in? His famous daughter Ann seems to have stolen all his publicity. For myself, without adequate sources, which seem in terribly short supply, I can't do a thing with this stub.Botteville (talk) 11:59, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Mentioned prominently in Budd Schulberg's autobio
Schulberg's father was the producer in charge of many Bancroft films and the books has some amusing and also sort of sad anecdotes about GB's decline was a top-paid actor to one who had to take a 90% pay cut in order to be hired. 50.230.251.244 (talk) 07:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)