HOW GEORGE BANCROFT BECAME A "HE-MAN"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 148, 10 July 1937, Page 8

HOW GEORGE BANCROFT BECAME A "HE-MAN"

George Bancroft to-day credits B. P. Schulberg, Paramount producer, with launching him in he-man screen roles and keeping him in this character cate: gory during his long motion picture career. 5 "When I invaded Hollywood, " said Bancroft, "I was prepared to be anything else but a so-called he-man. I'd never portrayed a villain in my life; on the contrary, I had been a ehild actor for many years before my 'teens, a black-face song-and-dance man, a specialist in comedy mix-ups, a romantic leading man in several playsj a trick bicycle rider in a vaudeville act, and a singer of romantic leads in comic opera. "Well, when stranger things happen they will occur in Hollywood, I'm certain of that. With all of those qualifications — and they wero studied and carefully considered, too — they made me the heavy in a Tom Mix film called '.Tebth. ' In a succeeding picture with Mix, I, as the heavy again, had the dubious pleasure of getting two cagart shot out of my mouth By the cowboy star. He used a deer gun and stood 40 paces from me. B. P. Schulberg, then also a Paramount producer, passed the set in time to view my reactions fo Tom's marksmanship. He told me I looked 'mlghty mean' and said he had a gangster picture coming up in which he could use me. "Well, that picture was made. Tt was titled 'Underworld/ and it made me a Btar. But the facnal expressions. which won me the part were not due to tm/eanness at all. I was just plain frightened!"