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British postcard by Santoro Graphics Ltd, no. C245.
American actor Rob Lowe (1964) was one of the members of the Brat Pack. He is known for the television series The West Wing, in which he played the role of Sam Seaborn.
Robert Hepler (Rob) Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1964. He was the son of Charles Lowe and Barbara Hepler and grew up in Dayton (Ohio) and Los Angeles. Lowe has one brother, the actor Chad Lowe (1968), and a younger half-brother from his father's second marriage, Justin. His career began when he was eight years old, with appearances on the local television station and summer theatre. After his parents' divorce, Lowe moved with his mother and brother to Los Angeles where, along with Emilio Estevez and others, he was educated at Santa Monica High School. In 1979, Lowe got the role of Tony Flanagan in the television sitcom A New Kind of Family (1979-1980). The series ended after only 11 episodes. However, his name stuck when the media noticed him and compared him to up-and-coming members of the Brat Pack. Along with Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham, Anthony Michael Hall, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, he was among the nine original members of the Brat Pack. He did a number of television films and earned his first Golden Globe nomination for the teen drama Thursday's Child (David Lowell Rich, 1983). Lowe appeared alongside Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise in The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The following year, he got the lead role in the film The Hotel New Hampshire (Tony Richardson, 1984), alongside Jodie Foster and Nastassja Kinski. Lowe starred with his fellow "Brat packers" in the coming-of-age film St. Elmo's Fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985). For this film, Lowe won his first award: a Razzie Award for worst male supporting actor. Partly because of his looks, Lowe became one of the Pack's most popular members. In between, Lowe starred in less noteworthy productions. In 1988, Lowe received his second Golden Globe nomination for the film Square Dance (Daniel Petrie, 1987). In 1988, however, his popularity suffered serious damage when a video emerged showing Lowe filming himself having sex with two girls, one of whom appeared to be underage. This happened in Atlanta, where Lowe was attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Lowe claimed he did not know she was underage, which was confirmed by the doorman of the bar where they met. She had also lied to get into the bar. For this, Lowe performed 20 hours of community service in Dayton. Around the same time, a leaked home video, in which Lowe could be seen with a model called Jennifer and a boyfriend, Justin Morris, while they were doing a threesome in a hotel room in Paris, was commercially marketed. This was one of the first celebrity sex videos to be sold commercially. Both videos caused a lot of damage to Lowe's career.
After these scandals, Rob Lowe sought treatment at a clinic for alcohol and sex addiction. After the scandals faded into oblivion, Lowe's career revived. This was partly because he mocked his irresponsible behaviour during an appearance as host of Saturday Night Live. In one of his appearances with the church lady, played by Dana Carvey, the latter promises to keep quiet about sex videos during the interview. In return, Lowe gets spanked by her live on TV. When Lowe is also spanked at the end of the skit, it turns out that, to the dismay of the church lady, this gets him sexually aroused. She starts exclaiming that Satan should be expelled from Lowe's buttocks, to which Lowe tells reporters, "I love getting spanked. I love the feeling of a glowing ass so much". In 1989, he sang the song 'Proud Mary' with the band Snow White at the Academy Awards, which was not a success. His role in the film Bad Influence (1990), in which he had to portray a villain, brought Lowe positively back into the limelight. In 1992, he made his Broadway debut in the play 'A Little Hotel on the Side'. The roles he was offered improved and in the same year Lowe appeared in Wayne's World. For his portrayal of the deaf-mute Nick Andros in the miniseries The Stand (Mick Garris, 1994) based on a book by Stephen King, Lowe received rave reviews. After this, Lowe temporarily disappeared behind the camera, where he produced the Western Frank & Jesse in 1994. In 1997, he wrote and directed the television film Desert's Edge. Also in 1997, he played the role of the right-wing leader of a Christian movement in the film Contact. In the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), he imitated the voice of Robert Wagner for the role of Young Number Two.
In 1999, Rob Lowe was back on television regularly when he got the role of acting head of communications Sam Seaborn in the NBC hit series The West Wing, about the life of President Bartlett (Martin Sheen). Basically, the series was supposed to revolve around his role, which was then the focus of the pilot episode, but the reviews for the complete cast were so raved, that a shift was made in the role assignment. In 2000 and 2001, Lowe received Golden Globe nominations in the "Best Actor" category for this, and in 2001 he also received an Emmy Award in the same category. In 2002, however, Lowe left the series because he could not agree on his role and salary. He wanted a more prominent role in the series with an accompanying salary than NBC was willing to give him. Although the other actors and especially Martin Sheen tried to keep him in the series, the episode featuring his departure was aired in February 2003, earlier than expected. During the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in two of the final four episodes. After this, he featured in the series Lyon's Den (2003), where he plays an idealistic attorney trying to get out of the shadow of his father, who is a senator. The series flopped and was taken off TV after 13 episodes. The same happened with the series Dr Vegas, also produced by Lowe. It stopped after 10 episodes due to a lack of success. Lowe starred in the remake of the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot (2004). In 2005, Lowe played the role of Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in the theatre production of Aaron Sorkin's play 'A Few Good Men' in West End London. Lowe played a supporting role as a movie agent in the satirical black comedy Thank You for Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2006) starring Aaron Eckhart. In 2013, Lowe played a notable role as the evil plastic surgeon Dr Jack Startz in Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013), the successful film about the last decade of pianist and entertainer Liberace's life. In 2017, Lowe began a reality series with his two sons, the then 24-year-old Matthew and 22-year-old Jon Owen, The Lowe Files. With the exception of the hour-long pilot, the series featured 30-minute road trips with the Lowe boys, and occasional TV guest stars known in the field, investigating common urban myths and legends that Rob has loved since he was a young boy and has shared with his boys throughout their growth. In 2015, Lowe received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Lowe has been married to makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff since 1991. They met on a blind date in 1983.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Since today's Movie Saturday, here's my top ten actors! I'm also going to include the film (or 1 TV show in this case) where this actor shined the most along side their name, check it out!
1. Paul Rudd (Ant-Man)
2. John C. Reilly (Check it Out! With Dr. Steve Brule) (yeah it's a TV show, but I love him in this role so much!)
3. Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy)
4. Will Ferrell (Anchorman)
5. John Goodman (The Big Lebowski)
6. Michael Shannon (Midnight Special)
7. Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)
8. Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
9. Sylvester Stallone (Rocky)
10. Michael Keaton (Birdman)
This video is a slideshow of images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
See more slideshows of myself as Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...
I took this photo of Civil War specialist actor, E.C. Fields, Jr., taking on the role of General Ulysses S. Grant at Camp Nelson, Kentucky. In 1864 the real General Grant visited the camp.
Our generation has forgotten just how formidable and brilliant this American commander was. It was the battles of America's bloodiest war, the Civil War, that would forge arguably America's greatest commander, General Ulysses S. Grant. In the British television series Great Commanders, Grant is placed among the world's six greatest military commanders of all time, among the likes of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Britain's very own Horatio Nelson. He is the only American on that very short list. Consider this: Confederate general after general went up in vain against him. That is amazing considering that Grant studied from the same military playbook. He was taught by the same military professors at West Point, and fought in the same wars. Yet, this low-key quiet midwesterner was considered unpredictable, unorthodox and ruthless. He wouldn't be shackled by the manual that he had been trained so well on. He would learn and change course. He outfoxed even the greatest enemy commanders who rebelled against the United States.
In surveying American history, Theodore Roosevelt said in 1900 of Ulysses Grant, "Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant." Roosevelt went on to place Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in the second tier.
But the early 20th Century would erode Grant's considerable accomplishments. With the flourishing of Jim Crow laws and the erection of Confederate statues, the false reputation of Grant spread as a drunk, a brute and a crook.
Yet, this supposed brutish plebeian, who allegedly obtained his wins by sheer brute advantage and was no intellectual match for his opponents, would produce in his sunset days the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. The autobiography would be the literary standard of prose, conciseness and candor that broke from the norms of the time that all U.S. Presidents since consider before writing their memoirs. How did such a literary gem happen from such an unskilled bungler who won simply because he had logistical advantage on his side?*
Camp Nelson was a distribution center for the U.S. Army and it also became a recruiting and training center for the U.S. Colored Troops. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, southern slaves that ran to the U.S. Army from the Confederacy were considered contraband of war. Despite the demands of the states in rebellion, the U.S. refused to return the slave property back to their Southern owners. Eventually, thousands of slaves served the U.S. Army at Camp Nelson.
In 1864 General Grant actually visited Camp Nelson. Grant assessed that Camp Nelson was in a poor position as a distribution center within the military's supply chain for Army efforts against the Confederacy. But his colleague, General Sherman, persuaded the commander to keep the camp going in its role of a recruiting and training center for colored troops.
*Note: Mathematics and logistics, two under-appreciated military skills, were Grant's talents coming into the Civil War. He had a knack for both. Regarding book authors from Civil War commanders, I am also a fan of General Lew Wallace of the U.S. Army, who wrote the fictional work Ben Hur about how adversity and life's unfairness can make one stronger — something that General Wallace knew from experience.
From a visit to Højris Castle. As a visitor you were invited to solve a 'murder crime'. They have live actors roaming the castle and a different story/crime to solve each year. Very popular and a good way to engage visitors of all ages.
Photo by Poul-Werner Dam / bit.ly/PWD_Flickr
Terracotta figurine of actors with masks. During the Hellenistic age comedy grew so popular that its theatrical types became the subjects of mosaics, wall-paintings and a common non expensive motif figurines. All favorite subjects of comedy (the pedagogue, the villager, Heracles and old Silen) are often depicted as humorous, rotund figures wearing mask.
The actors wore tights that covered them from neck to wrists and ankles; under the tights they had heavy padding fixed over the belly and backside, and sometimes breasts as well. The seams down the sides of sleeves or leggings were often made clear by painters. On the outside of the tights at the front was affixed a large leather phallus.
Source: Gregory W. Dobrov, “Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy”
Terracotta figurine
Ca. 4th century BC
Thessaloniki, Archaeological Museum
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 301. Photo: Boulting Bros.
English actor, film director and producer Richard Attenborough (1923) won two Oscars for Gandhi in 1983. He has also won four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. As an actor he is known for his roles in Brighton Rock (1947), The Great Escape (1963) and Jurassic Park (1993).
Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough was born in Cambridge, England in 1923. ‘Dickie’ was the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough née Clegg a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Richard’s brothers were nature documentarian David Attenborough and John Attenborough, who was an executive at Alfa Romeo before his death in 2012. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). At the age of 12, his acting career had started when he appeared in shows at Leicester's Little Theatre. Attenborough's film career began in an uncredited role as a deserting sailor in the war film In Which We Serve (Noël Coward, David Lean, 1942). During the Second World War Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training, he was seconded to the newly-formed RAF Film Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together (John Boulting, 1943-1945). He then volunteered to fly with the Film Unit and after further training, where he sustained permanent ear damage, qualified as a sergeant, flying on several missions over Europe filming from the rear gunner's position to record the outcome of Bomber Command sorties. After the war, he made his breakthrough as a psychopathic young gangster in the film of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1947), a part that he had previously played to great acclaim at the Garrick Theatre in 1942. Brighton Rock received critical acclaim and was the most popular British film of 1947. After that, he was type-cast for many years as working-class misfits or cowards in films like The Guinea Pig (Roy Boulting, 1948) in which the 26-year-old Attenborough was wholly credible as a 13-year-old schoolboy, London Belongs to Me (Sidney Gilliat, 1948) with Alastair Sim, and the naval drama Morning Departure (Roy Ward Baker, 1950) starring John Mills. In 1949 exhibitors voted Attenborough the 6th most popular British actor at the box office.
In 1952, Richard Attenborough starred in the original West End production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which went on to become the world's longest-running stage production. He took a 10% profit-participation in the production, which proved to be a wise business decision. During the 1950s, Attenborough worked prolifically in British films and appeared in successful comedies, such as Private's Progress (Roy Boulting, 1956) opposite Ian Carmichael, and I'm All Right Jack (Roy Boulting, 1959), also with Dennis Price. In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes. He began to build a profile as a producer on projects including the crime drama The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden, 1959), the drama The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960) with Pier Angeli, and Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961) starring Hayley Mills. In the first two, he also performed as an actor. In 1963 he appeared in the ensemble cast of The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) as RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (‘Big X’), the head of the escape committee and based on the real-life exploits of Roger Bushell. It was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film up to that time. During the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) and Guns at Batasi (John Guillermin, 1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM). In 1965 he played Lew Moran opposite James Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965), and in 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise, 1967), co-starring Steve McQueen and the second time for his comedic turn as a circus owner in Doctor Dolittle (Richard Fleischer, 1968) starring Rex Harrison. His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough, 1969). Sergio Angelini in Directors in British and Irish Cinema: “a project inherited from John Mills, who had developed the screenplay with Len Deighton from Joan Littlewood's stage production. This satiric fantasia on the First World War is largely set on Brighton Pier, but Attenborough and cinematographer Gerry Turpin successfully open out the play with a number of bravura sequences, the best remembered being the final shot which pulls back to reveal an entire hillside covered in white crosses.” He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (Richard Attenborough, 1972), which starred his favourite leading man, Anthony Hopkins, as Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. His acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971) garnered excellent reviews and he also played to great acclaim in Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece The Chess Players (1977). Following his appearance in The Human Factor (Otto Preminger, 1979), he stopped with film acting for more than a decade.
In 1982, Richard Attenborough finally realized a project he had been attempting to get made for 18 years: Gandhi, featuring Ben Kingsley. It proved to be an enormous commercial and critical success. Gandhi won eight Academy Awards, and Attenborough himself was awarded the Oscar for Best Director and as the film's producer, the Oscar for Best Picture. He also won the Golden Globe as Best Director in 1983 for his historical epic. He also published his book In Search of Gandhi, another product of his fascination with the Indian leader. Attenborough then directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (Richard Attenborough, 1985) and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom (Richard Attenborough, 1987), based on the life and death of the prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko and the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films. His most recent films as director and producer include the underrated Chaplin (Richard Attenborough, 1992) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (Richard Attenborough, 1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and Joy Gresham (Debra Winger). He made his come-back as an actor as the eccentric owner of a dinosaur theme park in Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1997). He also starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (Les Mayfield, 1994). Since then he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including as Sir William Cecil in the historical drama Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur,1998) with Cate Blanchett, Jacob in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (David Mallet, 1999) and as The Narrator in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's comedy book Puckoon (Terence Ryan 2002). He made his only appearance in a Shakespeare film when he played the British ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
Richard Attenborough has been married to English actress Sheila Sim since 1945. With his wife, they founded the Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Centre. He also founded the Jane Holland Creative Centre for Learning at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his elder daughter. Jane Holland, her mother-in-law, and her 15-year-old daughter Lucy were killed in 2004 when a tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake struck Khao Lak, Thailand where they were holidaying. Attenborough has two other children, Michael and Charlotte, an actress. Michael is a theatre director and the Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre in London. In 1967, Richard Attenborough was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was knighted in 1976 and in 1993 he was made a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond upon Thames. At 84, he made his last film as director and producer, Closing the Ring (Richard Attenborough, 2007). According to Jason Buchanan at AllMovie, “Sixty-five years after making his screen debut as a young stoker in co-directors Noël Coward and David Lean's World War II drama In Which We Serve, Richard Attenborough perfects the balance between epic story and intimate tale with this drama starring Shirley MacLaine and Neve Campbell as a mother and daughter who find a relic from the past sparking an incendiary series of events.” Attenborough served as vice president (1973–1995) and president (2002–2010) of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and as president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (2003– ). For 33 years he was President of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, and he is also the patron of the United World Colleges movement. He passionately believes in education, primary education that does not judge upon colour, race, creed, or religion. In 2008 Attenborough published, in association with his long-standing associate Diana Hawkins, an informal autobiography Entirely Up to You, Darling. Later that year he entered the hospital with heart problems and was fitted with a pacemaker. In December 2008 he suffered a fall at his home after a stroke and went into a coma, but came out of it within a few days. Shortly before her 90th birthday, in June 2012 Sheila Sim entered the actors' home Denville Hall, for which she and Attenborough had helped raise funds. In March 2013, in light of his deteriorating health, Attenborough moved into Denville Hall to be with his wife.
Sources: Sergio Angelini (Directors in British and Irish Cinema), Jason Buchanan (AllMovie), Encyclopaedia Britannica, AllMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Foreign, no. 1522/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Paramount / Parufamet. Publicity still for The Freshman (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1925).
American actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer Harold Lloyd (1893-1971) is best known for his silent comedies. He ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the three most popular and influential comedians of silent film. Between 1914 and 1947, Lloyd made nearly 200 comedies, often as a bespectacled 'Glass' character, a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with the 1920s-era United States. His films frequently contained 'thrill sequences' of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats. A classic is Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! (1923).
Harold Clayton Lloyd was born in 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. In 1910, after his father had several business ventures fail, Lloyd's parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California. Lloyd had acted in theatre since a child, and in San Diego, he received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art and began acting in one-reel film comedies around 1912. Lloyd worked with Thomas Edison's motion picture company, and his first role was a bit part as a Yaqui Indian in The Old Monk's Tale (J. Searle Dawley, 1913). At the age of 20, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles and took up roles in several Keystone comedies. He was also hired by Universal Studios as an extra . Lloyd began collaborating with his friend Hal Roach who had formed his own studio in 1913. They created Will E. Work and then Lonesome Luke, variations of Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp character. In 1914, Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress. The two were involved romantically and were known as The Boy and The Girl. In 1919, she left him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment, and she pursued her dramatic aspirations. Later that year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom he would marry in 1923. By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop a new character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism. The persona Lloyd referred to as his 'Glass' character was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed eyeglasses but wore normal clothing. Previously, he had worn a fake moustache and ill-fitting clothes as the Chaplinesque Lonesome Luke. In August 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he was seriously injured holding a prop bomb thought merely to be a smoke pot. It exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger. The blast was severe enough that the cameraman and prop director nearby were also seriously injured. Lloyd was in the act of lighting a cigarette from the fuse of the bomb when it exploded, also badly burning his face and chest and injuring his eye. Despite the proximity of the blast to his face, he retained his sight.
Beginning in 1921, Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach moved from shorts to feature-length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy, which pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, and the highly popular Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom, and Why Worry? (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923). Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1924), The Freshman (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1925) - his highest-grossing silent feature, The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, J.A. Howe, 1927), and Speedy (Ted Wilde, 1928), his final silent film. Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, 1929) was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest-paid film performer of the 1920s. Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing 12 feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four) and made more money overall ($15.7 million than Chaplin's $10.5 million). The huge financial success of Welcome Danger proved that audiences were eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938. The films released during this period were: Feet First (Clyde Bruckman, 1930), with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman, 1932) with Constance Cummings; The Cat's-Paw (Sam Taylor, 1934), which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way (Leo McCarey, 1936), which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with the Great Depression movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware (Elliott Nugent, 1938), was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.
In 1937, Harold Lloyd sold the land of his studio, Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple. Lloyd produced two comedies for RKO, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (Richard Wallace, 1941) with Lucille Ball, and a Kay Kyser vehicle, My Favorite Spy (Tay Garnett, 1942) which must have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. He retired from the screen until an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (Preston Sturges, 1947), an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, financed by Howard Hughes. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age, the optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot. The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Lloyd sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement. In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young and ending in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry, featuring June Allyson. The show was not renewed for the following season.
Harold Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, such as Ed Sullivan's variety show Toast of the Town (1949 and 1958). He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? (1953), and twice on This Is Your Life: in 1954 for Mack Sennett, and again in 1955, on his own episode. In 1953, Lloyd received an Academy Honorary Award for being a "master comedian and good citizen". He studied colours and microscopy, and was very involved with photography, including 3D photography and colour film experiments. He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after her death. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and particularly Jack Lemmon, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work. In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy (Harold Lloyd, 1962) and The Funny Side of Life (Harry Kerwin, 1963). The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Lloyd and Mildred Davis had two children together: Gloria Lloyd (1923–2012) and Harold Clayton Lloyd Jr. (1931–1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd but was known as Peggy for most of her life. Lloyd discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died from a heart attack in 1969, two years before Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancer, at his Greenacres home in Beverly Hills, California. He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. In 1990, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill produced the documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius. Composer Carl Davis wrote a new score for Safety Last! which he performed live during a showing of the film with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to great acclaim in 1993. The Brownlow and Gill documentary created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the United States, but the films were largely unavailable. Criterion Collection has since acquired the home video rights to the Lloyd Library, and has released Safety Last!, The Freshman, and Speedy.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
Photoshoot with Matthew Raetz
Actor/Model
Learn more about Matt here
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Lake Vista
New Orleans, Louisiana
James Gandolfini, whose portrayal of a brutal, emotionally delicate mob boss in HBO's The Sopranos helped create one of TV's greatest drama series and turned the mobster stereotype on its head, died Wednesday in Italy. He was 51.
Belgian postcard, no. KF 37. Photo: Republic Pictures.
American singer and cowboy actor Roy Rogers (1911–1998) was one of the most popular Western stars of his era. Known as the 'King of the Cowboys', he appeared in over 100 films.
Roy Rogers (born Leonard Slye) moved to California in 1930, aged 18. He played in such musical groups as The Hollywood Hillbillies, Rocky Mountaineers, Texas Outlaws, and his own group, the International Cowboys. In 1934 he formed a group with Bob Nolan called Sons of the Pioneers. While in that group he was known as Leonard Slye, then Dick Weston. From his first film appearance in 1935, he appeared steadily in Westerns, including a bit role as a bandit opposite Gene Autry in The Old Coral (Joseph Kane, 1936). In 1938, he played a large supporting role as a singing cowboy in another Gene Autry Western, The Old Barn Dance (Joseph Kane, 1938). That same year, Autry entered the United States Army Air Force. Republic immediately rechristened 'Roy Rogers', and was assigned the lead in Under Western Stars (Joseph Kane, 1938). Rogers became a matinee idol and American legend. In addition to his own films, Rogers played a supporting role in the John Wayne classic Dark Command (Raoul Walsh, 1940). In the Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars poll, Rogers was listed for 15 consecutive years from 1939 to 1954, holding first place from 1943 to 1954.
Roy Rogers also did numerous radio and television episodes of The Roy Rogers Show. In many of his films and television episodes, he appeared with his wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino Trigger, and his German Shepherd dog Bullet. His show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often Pat Brady, Andy Devine, or George 'Gabby' Hayes. In his later years, Rogers lent his name to the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain. His final film part was as an old time working cowboy who's not settled down in Mackintosh and T.J. (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1975). There was a Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum at Branson, Missouri, but it closed in 2011.
Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Sindicato de actores de #EEUU realizó su entrega de premios número 23 t.co/A0X7kwJ9N4 #Espectáculos #ACN t.co/8w58gh3P1D (via Twitter twitter.com/AgenciaCN/status/826254428395204608)
Actor and race car driver Patrick Dempsey. I shot this at the track today during drivers autograph session.
Actor
Learn more about Bryan here
www.imdb.com/name/nm6882080/?ref_=nmmd_md_nm
Rivertown
Kenner, Louisiana
American postcard. Re-issue (cpm) by Fotofolio. Photo James Abbe, 1921. Made in the time of The Kid (Chaplin, 1921).
American actor John Leslie 'Jackie' Coogan (1914-1984) began as a child actor in silent films. He was Charlie Chaplin's irascible sidekick in The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) and played the title role in Oliver Twist (Frank Lloyd, 1922). Many years later, he became known as Uncle Fester in the TV series The Addams Family (1964-1966). In the interim, he sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings ($48 million to $65 million adjusted for 2012 dollars) and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, widely known as 'the Coogan Act'.
Sources: Wikipedia.
French postcard by Viny, no. 6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
William Powell (1892-1984) was an American actor, whose career began in silent film. He is best known for the Thin Man film series in which he starred opposite Myrna Loy. Powell was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Leading Actor a total of three times.
William Horatio Powell was born in Pittsburgh in 1892. He always wanted to act. When he was 18, he started studying drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He graduated in 1912. He then went to Broadway. In 1922 he began a career in Hollywood with a role alongside Marion Davies in When Knighthood Was in Flower (Robert G. Vignola, 1922). In 1924 he signed a studio contract with Paramount Pictures and went on to star in numerous productions, including the now-lost 1926 premiere of The Great Gatsby (Herbert Brenon, 1926), starring Warner Baxter and Lois Wilson. In the silent era, he primarily played sinister characters such as thieves, blackmailers, and bad husbands. He finally attracted attention as Leo, the arrogant film director in Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) alongside Emil Jannings. The big success for Powell came with the advent of the talkies in the late 1920s, which also showcased his pleasant voice. The crime film The Canary Murder Case (Malcolm St. Clair, Frank Tuttle, 1929), in which he portrayed Philo Vance, the private detective best known from the novels of S. S. Van Dine, who investigates the death of Louise Brooks, "the Canary." It established him in more positive roles. Together with Kay Francis, Powell formed an on-screen pair in six films from 1930 to 1932. In 1931, he married actress Carole Lombard, whom he divorced in 1933.
In 1934, William Powell went to MGM, where he was teamed with Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934). While Philo Vance made Powell a star, another detective, Nick Charles, made him famous. Powell received an Academy Award nomination for the role of the wealthy amateur detective Nick Charles in the crime comedy The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) with Myrna Loy as his wealthy wife Nora. Between 1934 and 1947 he appeared in 14 films as Loy's partner. In 1935, he had a relationship with Jean Harlow and they got engaged. However, they never married. Harlow died in 1937. Powell starred in the Best Picture winner for 1936, The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936). He received his second Academy Award nomination for My Man Godfrey (1936) and his third for his work in Life with Father (Michael Curtiz, 1947) with Irene Dunne and Elizabeth Taylor. His screen appearances became less frequent after that, and his last role was in Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, 1955). William Powell died of natural causes in Palm Springs in 1984. He was married three time. His wives were Eileen Wilson (1915-1930), Carole Lombard (1931-1933) and Diana Lewis (1940-1984 - his death). With Wilson, he had a son, William Powell. His son stabbed himself to death while taking a shower. He left a four-page good-bye letter to his father, with whom he was very close.
Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Explore: Jul 5, 2008 #280. A promotional shot for Oliver O'Dea, the former Cambridge boxer who is now focussing again on his acting career. I wanted to convey a sense of the future, with him looking to the future and the path ahead! He tells me he has a role in The Hunt for Gollum, a Lord of the Rings fan film, which is due out by the end of the year.
More on Oliver at www.oliverodea.com/index.html
and the film at www.hunt4gollum.com/ .
Aspiring actor and model. I've been stepping out of my comfort zone and doing more photo shoots lately. Watch out for Matthew, I believe he has it in him to do well in the business. Learn more about him here
City Park
New Orleans, Louisiana
Austrian postcard by B.K.W.I. (Brüder Kohn, Wien). Feodor Chaliapin as Don Quixote
Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938) was an international sensation and is considered as the greatest Russian singer of the twentieth century, as well as the greatest male operatic actor ever. The possessor of a large, deep and expressive basso profundo, he was celebrated at major opera houses all over the world and established the tradition of naturalistic acting in operas. The only sound film which shows his acting style is Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, or Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin) was born in 1873, into a poor peasant family in Omet Tawi, near Kazan, Russia. His childhood was full of suffering, hunger, and humiliation. From the age of 10, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker, a sales clerk, a carpenter, and a lowly clerk in a district court before joining, at age 17, a local operetta company. In 1890, Chaliapin was hired to sing in a choir at the Semenov-Samarsky private theatre in Ufa. There he began singing solo parts. In 1891, he toured Russia with the Dergach Opera. In 1892, he settled in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), because he found a good teacher, Dmitri Usatov, who gave Chaliapin free professional opera training for one year. He also sang at the St. Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral in Tbilisi. In 1893, he began his career at the Tbilisi Opera, and a year later, he moved to Moscow upon recommendation of Dmitri Usatov. In 1895 ,Chaliapin debuted at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod’s Faust, in which he was a considerable success. In 1896 he also joined Mamontovs Private Russian Opera in Moscow, where he mastered the Russian, French, and Italian roles that made him famous. Savva Mamontov was a Russian industrialist and philanthropist, who staged the operas, conducted the orchestra, trained the actors, taught them singing and paid all the expenses. At Mamontov's, he met in 1897 Sergei Rachmaninoff, who started as an assistant conductor there. The two men remained friends for life. With Rachmaninoff he learned the title role of Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which became his signature character. Rachmaninoff taught him much about musicianship, including how to analyse a music score, and insisted that Chaliapin learn not only his own roles but also all the other roles in the operas in which he was scheduled to appear. When Chaliapin became dissatisfied with his performances, Chaliapin began to attend straight dramatic plays to learn the art of acting. His approach revolutionised acting in opera. In 1896, Savva Mamontov introduced Chaliapin to a young Italian ballerina Iola Tornagi, who came to Moscow for a stage career. She quit dancing and devoted herself to family life with Chaliapin. He was very happy in this marriage. From 1899 until 1914, he also performed regularly at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The couple settled in Moscow and had six children. Their first boy died at the age of 4, causing Chaliapin a nervous breakdown.
In 1901, Feodor Chaliapin made his sensational debut at La Scala in the role of the devil in Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito under the baton of conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other famous roles were Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky's opera, King Philip in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos. Bertram in Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, and Ivan the Terrible in The Maid of Pskov by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His great comic characterizations were Don Basilio in Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Leporello in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1906, Chaliapin started a civil union with Maria Valentinovna Petzhold (also called: Maria Augusta Eluchen) in St. Petersburg, Russia. She had three daughters with Chaliapin in addition to 2 other children from her previous family. He could not legalize his second family, because his first wife would not give him a divorce. Chaliapin even applied to the Emperor Tsar Nicholas II with a request of registering his three daughters under his last name. His request was not satisfied. In 1913, Chaliapin was introduced to London and Paris by the brilliant entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev. He began giving well-received solo recitals in Paris in which he sang traditional Russian folk songs as well as more serious fare, and also performed at the Paris Opera. His acting and singing was sensational to the western audiences. He made many sound recordings, of which the 1913 recordings of the Russian folk songs Vdol po Piterskoi and The Song of the Volga Boatmen are best known. In 1915, he made his film debut as Czar Ivan IV the Terrible in the silent Russian film Tsar Ivan Vasilevich Groznyy/Czar Ivan the Terrible (Aleksandr Ivanov-Gai, 1915) opposite the later director Richard Boleslawski. Fourteen years later, he appeared in another silent film, the German-Czech coproduction Aufruhr des Blutes/Riot of the blood (Victor Trivas, 1929) with Vera Voronina and Oscar Marion.
Feodor Chaliapin was torn between his two families for many years, living with one in Moscow, and with another in St. Petersburg. With Maria Petzhold and their three daughters, he left Russia in 1922 as part of an extended tour of western Europe. They would never return. Ther family settled in Paris. A man of lower-class origins, Chaliapin was not unsympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution and his emigration from Russia was painful. Although he had left Russia for good, he remained a tax-paying citizen of Soviet Russia for several years. Finally he could divorce in 1927 and marry Maria Petzhold. Chaliapin worked for impresario Sol Hurok and from 1921 on, he sang for eight seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His debut at the Met in the 1907 season had been disappointing due to the unprecedented frankness of his stage acting. In 1921, the public in New York had grown more broad-minded and the eight seasons were a huge success. According to Steve Shelokhonov at IMDb, Chaliapin was the undisputed best basso in the first half of the 20th century. He had revolutionised opera by bringing serious acting in combination with great singing. His first open break with the Soviet regime occurred in 1927 when the government, as part of its campaign to pressure him into returning to Russia, stripped him of his title of 'The First People’s Artist of the Soviet Republic' and threatened to deprive him of Soviet citizenship. Prodded by Joseph Stalin, Maxim Gorky, Chaliapin’s longtime friend, tried to persuade him to return to Russia. Gorky broke with him after Chaliapin published his memoirs, Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer (Maska i dusha, 1932), in which he denounced the lack of freedom under the Bolsheviks.
The only sound film which shows Chaliapin's acting style is Don Quixote/Adventures of Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). He had also starred onstage as the knight in Jules Massenet's 1910 opera, Don Quichotte, but the 1933 film does not use Massenet's music, and is more faithful to Miguel de Cervantes' novel than the opera. In fact there were three versions of this early sound film. Georg Wilhelm Pabst shot simultaneously with the German language version also English and French versions. Feodor Chaliapin Sr. starred in all three versions of Don Quixote, but with a different supporting cast. Sancho Pansa was played by Dorville in the German and French versions but by George Robey in the English version. Benoit A. Racine at IMDb: "These films (the French, English and German versions) were an attempt to capture his legendary stage performance of this character even though the songs are by Jacques Ibert. Ravel had also been asked to compose the songs for the film but he missed the deadline and his songs survive on their own with texts that are different from those found here. The interplay between the French and English versions is fascinating. Some scenes are done exactly the same for better or worse, some use the same footage, re-cut to edit out performance problems, while others have slight variants in staging and dialogue. (The English version was doctored by Australian-born scriptwriter and director John Farrow, Mia's father, by the way.) Even though the films are short and they transform, reduce and simplify considerably the original novel, they still manage to carry the themes and the feeling that would make Man of La Mancha a hit several decades later and to be evocative of Cervantes' Spain." In the late 1930s, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. suffered from leukaemia and kidney ailment. In 1937, he died in Paris, France. He was laid to rest is the Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery in Moscow. Chaliapin was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6770 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. In 1998, the TV film Chaliapin: The Enchanter (Elisabeth Kapnist, 1998) followed. His son Boris Chaliapin became a famous painter. who painted the portraits used on 414 covers of the Time magazine between 1942 and 1970. Another son Feodor Chaliapin Jr. became a film actor, who appeared in character roles in such films as the Western Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill (Mario Costa, 1965) with Gordon Scott, and Der Name der Rose/The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986), starring Sean Connery. His first wife, Iola Tornagi, lived in the Soviet Union until 1959, when Nikita Khrushchev brought the 'Thaw'. Tornagi was allowed to leave the Soviet Union and reunited with her son Feodor Chaliapin Jr, in Rome, Italy.
Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Benoit A. Racine (IMDb), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and IMDb.
Title: ['The Unguarded Hour']
Creator: Sassoon, Elias Victor (1881-1961)
Date: 1939
Part Of: Sir Ellice Victor Elias Sassoon papers and photographs
Series: China and Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1939, album
Place: Shanghai, Shanghai, China
Physical Description: 1 photograph album cover: part of 1 volume (24 gelatin silver prints); 29 x 38 cm
File: ag2011_0005x_2_5_3_47_opt.jpg
Rights: Please cite DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University when using this file. A high-resolution version of this file may be obtained for a fee. For details see the sites.smu.edu/cul/degolyer/research/permissions/ web page. For other information, contact degolyer@smu.edu.
For more information and to view the image in high resolution, see: digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/eaa/id/1579
View the Europe, Asia, and Australia: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints Collection
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4345/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.
Burly, beefy and tall George Bancroft (1882-1956) was an American film and stage actor who played many ill-tempered tough guys. He received an Oscar nomination for his part as Thunderbolt Jim Lang in Josef von Sternberg's gangster film Thunderbolt (1929). Bancroft is also well remembered as Marshal Curly Wilcox in John Ford's Western Stagecoach (1939).
George Bancroft was born in 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended high school at Tomes Institute in Port Deposit, Maryland. After working on merchant marine vessels at age 14, Bancroft was an apprentice on the USS Constellation and later served on the USS Essex and the West Indies. Additionally, during the Battle of Manila Bay (1898), he was a gunner on the USS Baltimore. During his days in the Navy, he staged plays aboard ship. In 1900, he swam underneath the hull of the battleship USS Oregon to check the extent of the damage after it struck a rock off the coast of China. For this, he won an impressive appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He graduated as a commissioned officer, and served in the Navy for the prescribed period of required service but no more. He decided to turn to show business, first as a theatre manager. 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. By 1923, he was good enough for Broadway and spent about a year there doing two plays, the musical comedies Cinders (1923) and The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923). Two years earlier, he had already made his first appearance in the silent film The Journey's End (1921). Being a big man with dark features, he was a natural for heavies. And it seemed that early Westerns were an easy fit as well after his first four films. Through 1924 and into 1925, he did four, culminating with pay dirt in his appealing performance as rogue Jack Slade in the silent Western The Pony Express (James Cruze, 1925). With him was another up-and-coming character actor, Wallace Beery. Bancroft's acting made Paramount Pictures take a look at him as star material. He played an important supporting role in a cast including Wallace Beery and Charles Farrell in the period naval widescreen epic Old Ironsides (James Cruze, 1926). His roles as tough guy took on more flesh in his association with director Josef von Sternberg and his well-honed gangster films. The first of these was Underworld (Josef von Sternberg, 1927) with Clive Brook and Evelyn Brent. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story. He next appeared in von Sternberg's The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928) with Betty Compson and Olga Baclanova, and their work culminated with Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg, 1929) for which Bancroft received an Oscar nomination. He was tops at the box office.
George Bancroft played the title role in The Wolf of Wall Street (Rowland V. Lee, 1929), released just prior to the Wall Street Crash. It was Bancroft's first talkie. He appeared in Paramount's all-star revue Paramount on Parade (Elsie Hanis, a.o., 1930) and the crime film Blood Money (Rowland Brown, 1933) with Frances Dee and Judith Anderson. His various on-screen personas as bigger-than-life strong man was not far from his off-screen character as Hollywood notability got to him. It was recalled that he became more difficult to deal with as his ego grew. William McPeak at IMDb: "At one point, he refused to obey a director's order that he fall down after being shot by the villain. Bancroft declared, 'One bullet can't kill Bancroft!'" He stayed busy through the 1930s as older and stouter featured characters. Bancroft was getting competition from younger character actors. In the early 1930s, his roles continued to typecast him as lead heavies, but increasingly, he was cast as second tier in later roles. He was paper editor MacWade in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936), starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, a doctor in A Doctor's Diary (Charles Vidor, 1937), a contracter in Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938) with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, and a warden in Each Dawn I Die (William Keighley, 1939) with Cagney and George Raft. Most memorably is his Marshal Curly Wilcox in the classic Western Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939), opposite John Wayne. Here he is particularly engaging as a tough lawman with a big heart. Into the 1940s, he only did a handful of films. But he again had a rogue's spotlight with another name director, Cecil B. DeMille, in one of his epics. He played a Texas Ranger chasing a murderer over the Canadian border in North West Mounted Police (Cecil B. DeMille, 1940) with a stellar cast including Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, and Paulette Goddard as fleeing criminal, Jacques Corbeau's (Bancroft) daughter. By 1942, Bancroft had decided to move on, retiring with the intention of becoming a Southern California rancher. He quietly assumed this new role for a long run of 14 years before his passing. George Bancroft passed away in 1956 in Santa Monica, California. He was married twice, first to Edna Brothers, and after their divorce to silent film actress Octavia Broske. They had a daughter Georgette.
Sources: William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.