A star of pre-Code Hollywood, he is best known as the tough guy lead in four Josef von Sternberg films, the last of which, Thunderbolt (1929) earned him a Best Actor Award nomination.

[4] 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.

[note 2][5] He played the title role in The Wolf of Wall Street (1929, released just prior to the Wall Street Crash), appeared in Paramount's all-star revue Paramount on Parade (1930) and starred in Rowland Brown's Blood Money (1933), condemned by the censors because they feared the film would "incite law-abiding citizens to crime.

"[citation needed] Reportedly, he refused to fall down on set after a prop revolver was fired at him, saying "Just one bullet can't stop Bancroft!".

Bancroft enjoyed his career height in the late 1920s, his thirties' films where he was the leading man, didn't quite have the same impact and by 1936 he had slipped to being a supporting actor; although he still appeared in such classics as Mr.