Anne Bancroft, 73, Prolific Actress of Stage and Screen

Anne Bancroft, who died of cancer Monday at 73, was an Academy Award and Tony award-winning actress known, above all, for her portrayal of the world-weary, frustrated Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate.”The role was typically adventuresome for Bancroft, whose previous career highlight had been playing Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s dogged tutor in “The Miracle Worker.” Bancroft won a Tony for the original stage version on Broadway in 1959 and the best actress Academy Award for recreating the role in the 1962 film.Bancroft was also nominated for best actress four other times in a career as remarkable for its longevity as for its depth.In 1957, Bancroft opted out of the movies after several years of frustration as a studio player, during which she somewhat unconvincingly was cast in ingenue roles. She headed for Broadway, where she found immediate success in “Two for the Seesaw,” playing a bohemian ballet dancer in a dalliance with Henry Fonda. She won her first Tony for that role. The World-Telegram and Sun’s reviewer, Frank Aston, wrote: “Miss Bancroft turns out to be a deliriously captivating comic, a rich discovery, a youngster who should do much for the West 40s.”“Two for the Seesaw” was written by William Gibson, directed by Arthur Penn, and produced by Fred Coe; the same team cast her in “The Miracle Worker” two years later. After winning the Academy Award for the film version, Bancroft starred in Harold Pinter’s “The Pumpkin Eater” (1964) and was promptly nominated again. The same year, she married Mel Brooks, then a slightly obscure former writer for “Your Show of Shows.” (“Get Smart” premiered the next year, and the film “The Producers” appeared in 1968.)The two only occasionally worked together, although Bancroft had bit parts in several of Brooks’s films. One exception was the musical comedy “To Be or Not to Be” (1983), in which the couple do a delirious song-and-dance version of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” sung in Polish.Bancroft was raised in the Bronx by Italian immigrant parents; her father was a dress-pattern maker and her mother was a telephone operator at Macy’s. A born performer, young Anna Maria Luisa Italiano was sent to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts following high school. She got her first professional job after she was found rehearsing by herself during lunch hour.“I had no money for malteds and no dates,” Bancroft told Time magazine in 1959, when she appeared on the cover. “What the hell was there for me to do but stay onstage when the other kids were out?” She was soon cast on television shows, including “The Goldbergs,” an early soap opera, and “Studio One,” a drama. She also worked at a drugstore and was an English tutor to the Peruvian singer Yma Sumac.In 1951, Bancroft signed a studio contract with 20th Century Fox. She spent the next few years in a series of low-budget features. It was then that she chose her stage name, from a list submitted to her by Fox production head Darryl Zanuck.Her first film appearance was as nightclub singer Lyn Lesley in “Don’t Bother to Knock” (1952), starring Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark. Later roles included a Roman lady in “Demetrius and the Gladiators” (1954), a mobster’s rebellious daughter in “New York Confidential” (1955), and Tianay, an Apache widow given as a housekeeper to Indian Agent John P. Clum (Audie Murphy) in “Walk the Proud Land” (1956).“I learned a great deal in Hollywood, even though I’m not particularly proud of the fifteen or so films I made,” Bancroft told Theatre magazine in 1959.After the successes of “Two For the Seesaw” and “The Miracle Worker,” Bancroft had several shorter Broadway runs, including “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1963), “The Devils” (1965), and as Regina Giddens in a Mike Nichols-directed revival of “The Little Foxes” in 1967, the same year as “The Graduate,” also directed by Mr. Nichols. She was nominated for best actress as Mrs. Robinson, despite having resorted to a body double for a nude scene. She recognized the role as having shaped her career. In 2002, she said, “To this day, when men meet me, there’s always that movie in the back of their minds.”After slowing down for a few years and having a son, Max, Bancroft took smaller parts in “The Hindenberg Disaster” and “Lipstick” before returning with a vengeance as an aging ballerina in “The Turning Point” (1977).The role garnered her a fourth best actress nomination; she lost out to Diane Keaton, as Annie Hall.She continued to work regularly. Later credits included “The Elephant Man” (1980),”Agnes of God” (1985, Oscar nomination no. 5), and “84 Charing Cross Road” (1987). In the 1990s, she became the epitome of an older woman who still has plenty of pep, in “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (1994), “How to Make an American Quilt” (1995), and “G.I. Jane” (1997). In 1998, she voiced the Queen in the computer animated “Antz.”Compared by many for her combination of beauty and tendency toward histrionics to a younger, thinner Anna Magnani, Bancroft was in fact a prototypical “method” actor and had been a student at the Actors Studio. Her devotion to preparation was well known; before she played Annie Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker,” she spent weeks working with blind children, and even walked the streets with her eyes taped shut.She appeared on stage with declining frequency in later years. “Golda” ran for just 93 performances in 1977-78, and “Duet for One,” based on the life of Jacqueline du Pre, lasted just 20 performances in 1981-82. Her final play, Edward Albee’s “The Occupant,” based on the life of Louise Nevelson, closed after only a month in 2002, when the star came down with pneumonia.The lights on Broadway will be dimmed tonight in Bancroft’s honor, the League of American Theatres announced.Anne BancroftBorn Anna Maria Luisa Italiano on September 17, 1931, in the Bronx; died June 6 of uterine cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital; survived by her husband, Mel Brooks, her son, Max, and a grandson; also survived by her mother and two sisters.

Anne Bancroft, 73, Prolific Actress of Stage and Screen

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