MISS ANNE BANCROFT
(September 17, 1931 - June 6, 2005)
It's worth noting that, before Broadway recognized Bancroft for the talent that she was, Hollywood didn't. Before Annie Sullivan, before Mrs. Robinson, the former Anna Maria Louisa Italiano was shoehorned into typical starlet parts in such tawdry affairs as Gorilla at Large (1954), which, we hate to admit, we actually kinda liked as young gaylings. She also holds the distinction of playing opposite both Marilyn Monroe (in Bancroft's 1952 film debut, Don't Bother to Knock) and, further down the food chain, Mamie Van Doren, in 1957's The Girl in Black Stockings.
AN OVERHEATED STEVE COCHRAN & ANNE BANCROFT IN AN EPISODE OF CLIMAX! (1956)
Frustrated by the roles she was receiving in Hollywood, Bancroft turned to Broadway, and the rest is history. She won Tony Awards in 1958 and 1962, for Two for the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker, respectively; even more miraculously, Bancroft was chosen over more established movie "names" to appear in the film version of the latter, and won an Oscar (famously accepted on her behalf by Miss Joan Crawford; Bancroft was appearing on Broadway in Mother Courage at the time of the ceremony).
JOAN CRAWFORD PRESENTS BANCROFT WITH HER OSCAR ONSTAGE, FOLLOWING BANCROFT'S PERFORMANCE IN MOTHER COURAGE, 1963
In 1967, Bancroft achieved film immortality as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, demonstrating that her leg art had graduated from this...
...to this:
One of the select few entertainers to claim an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy (for her acclaimed TV special, Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man), Bancroft, a.k.a. Mrs. Mel Brooks, passed away from uterine cancer in 2005. Here's to you, Anne Bancroft!
A screen goddess. I remember watching her in the Miracle Worker. I'm not one to cry from movies, but at the end of the flick, I was in tears. RIP, Miss Bankcroft. You are remembered.
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