Thunderbolt is a 1929

1929 in film

-Events:The days of the silent film are numbered. A mad scramble to provide synchronized sound is on.*January 20 - The movie In Old Arizona is released. The film is the first full-length talking film to be filmed outdoors....

 proto-noir which tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend. It stars George Bancroft

George Bancroft (actor)

George Bancroft was an American Hollywood film actor of the 1920s and '30s.-Biography:Bancroft was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1882. During his early days as a sailor he staged plays on board ship. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy, but left the Navy to become a "black...

, Fay Wray

Fay Wray

Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

, Richard Arlen

Richard Arlen

-Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

, Tully Marshall

Tully Marshall

William Phillips was an American character actor known as Tully Marshall, with nearly a quarter century of theatrical experience behind before he made his first film appearance in 1914.-Career:...

 and Eugenie Besserer

Eugenie Besserer

Eugenie Besserer was an actress born in Watertown, New York of French Canadian parents, who starred in silent films and features of the early sound motion picture era, beginning in 1910.- Orphan in Canada:...

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The movie was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane . Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott, said that Herman Mankiewicz was...

, Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...

 (titles) and Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...

 from the story by Charles Furthman and Jules Furthman

Jules Furthman

Jules Furthman was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter.Born in Chicago, Illinois, during World War I he wrote under the name "Stephen Fox." Furthman wrote screenplays for a number of important or popular films, including: The Docks of New York , Thunderbolt , Merely...

. It was directed by von Sternberg.

Bancroft was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor

Academy Award for Best Actor

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

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