Oscar Profile #26: Anne Bancroft

Born Anna Maria Italiano in the Bronx on September 17, 1931, the future Anne Bancroft made her screen debut in 1952’s Don’t Bother to Knock. In featured roles in A movies like Demetrius and the Gladiators and lead roles in B movies like Gorilla at Large, she became dissatisfied with her film career by the late 1950s and went back to New York where she rebooted her career on Broadway. She won back-to-back Tonys for Two for the Seesaw opposite Henry Fonda and The Miracle Worker, a role she would reprise on her return to Hollywood.

Bancroft’s Oscar for the 1962 film version of The Miracle Worker put her in rarefied company. She became only the fourth performer to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role, following Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac; Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba and Yul Brynner in The King and I.

Following her Oscar winning portrayal of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, in The Miracle Worker, the world was her oyster and she had her pick of projects. She chose Harold Pinter’s austere screenplay, The Pumpkin Eater, in which she played an unhappy mother of nine. The unusual role brought her a second nomination just two years later.

When Patricia Neal had to be replaced in John Ford’s last film, 1966’s 7 Women, it was Bancroft who got the call. The following year, a still recovering Neal had to reluctantly turn down the lead in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. The result was another iconic role for Bancroft and another Oscar nomination.

She didn’t make another film until 1972’s Young Winston, in which she played Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston’s American born mother. Not a big hit in the U.S., the film was popular in the U.K. and she received a BAFTA nomination for her performance.

Working steadily throughout the remainder of the 1970s, she had her best role of the decade as a fading ballerina in 1977’s The Turning Point, for which she received her fourth Oscar nomination.

She had a remarkable streak in the 1980s, receiving four successive Golden Globe nominations from 1983-1986 for To Be or Not to Be; Garbo Talks; Agnes of God and ‘night, Mother and a BAFTA win for 84 Charing Cross Road the following year. She had also received her fifth Oscar nomination for Agnes of God.

Her supporting role as Harvey Fierstein’s mother in 1988’s Torch Song Trilogy kicked off nearly two decades of such roles, the best of which was probably as Holly Hunter’s mother in 1995’s Home for the Holidays.

Active in TV since the 1970s, she has two Emmys and five additional Emmy nominations for that work. One of her TV’s last roles was as the female panderer in the 2003 version of Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone in support of Helen Mirren and Olivier Martinez, for which she nominated for an Emmy, a Satellite and a SAG award. She, her husband, comedian Mel Brooks, and her son, writer Max Brooks, are all Emmy winners.

Anne Bancroft died in 2005 at 73. She was survived by her husband, son, daughter-in-law, two month old grandson, two sisters and her 97 year-old mother who passed away in 2010 at the age of 102.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE MIRACLE WORKER (1962), directed by Arthur Penn

Teresa Wright and Patty McCormack were the original Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller in the 1957 Playhouse 90 production of The Miracle Worker, but Bancroft and Patty Duke made the roles their own, first on Broadway, then on screen, and both won Oscars for their marvelous performances. For Bancroft, it was her second chance at movie stardom and this time there was no turning back. No wonder it was her favorite role, so much so that she was always miffed whenever she read articles about herself referring to her as the star of The Graduate.

7 WOMEN (1966), directed by John Ford

Bancroft plays an atheist doctor in Ford’s final film about a Protestant mission in 1930s China run by seven women (Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee, Sue Lyon, Jane Chang) and a couple of men, including Eddie Albert. When a Chinese warlord holds the mission hostage, it is the atheistic doctor who sacrifices herself to save them all. It’s Ford at his towering best, with Bancroft and Leighton sharing the acting honors with their duel of wills.

THE GRADUATE (1967), directed by Mike Nichols

Sometimes performers are not the best judges of their work. As marvelous as Bancroft was in The Miracle Worker, it’s her alternately sexy and menacing Mrs. Robinson in The Gradaute that really is her signature role. Other actresses, including a grown-up Patty Duke, have successfully played Annie Sullivan – it’s basically a foolproof role, but no one who has attempted it has ever come close to capturing the magic of Bancroft’s cougar on the prowl. As good as first and second choices Doris Day and Patricia Neal might have been, I doubt either of them could have been as unforgettable as she was. It was the perfect amalgam of actress and role.

THE TURNING POINT (1977), directed by Herbert Ross

The 45 year-old Bancroft was simply amazing as the over-the-hill ballerina at odds with friend Shirley MacLaine over the thrust of MacLaine’s daughter’s emerging ballet career. There is more dancing in this movie than audiences were used to, and as good as it may be, the meat of the film is the scenes between the two women. Both were nominated for Oscars and Bancroft won the National Board of Review for Best Actress in a year when most of the prizes went to Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. The NBR solved the problem by giving Keaton’s their award for supporting actress.

AGNES OF GOD (1985), directed by Norman Jewison

Jane Fonda received top billing as a psychiatrist and Meg Tilly had the showier role of a novice nun accused of murdering her newborn child, but Bancroft’s portrayal of the worldly wise mother superior who engages Fonda in a battle of wits provided the glue that held it all together. Everything in the film seems to be going along the way you expect it to until Fonda objects to something Bancroft says and responds with ”bullshit!” Bancroft, without blinking an eye responds with “bullshit yourself” and you realize once again what an extraordinary actress it is whose presence you are in, someone who will once take you places you never expected to go, and does.