Background
Bancroft, Anne was born on September 17, 1931 in Bronx, New York, United States. She was a daughter of Italian immigrants.
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1964
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1966
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1972
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2001
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Bancroft, Anne was born on September 17, 1931 in Bronx, New York, United States. She was a daughter of Italian immigrants.
She was a student of Christopher Colombus High School in New York. Later she was educated at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors' Studio
She made her Broadway debut in Two for the Seesaw 1958, played Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker 1959-1960.
She worked in TV before going to Hollywood in 1952. Although she was not happy with this first film career, her early work is quirky and eye-catching: Don 't Bother to Knock (52, Rov Baker); Treasure of the Golden Condor (53) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (54), both for Delmer Daves; Gorilla at Large (54, Harmon |ones); Fregonese’s The Raid (54); Russell Rouse’s New York Confidential (55); blonde in The Last Frontier (55), one of the few striking female performances in Anthony Mann's work; Nightfall (56, Jacques Tourneur); Walk the Proud Land (56); The Girl in Black Stockings (57, Howard W. Koch); and Allan Dwan’s The Restless Breed (57).
She went back to New' York and made her stage debut, creating the leading parts in Two For the Seesaw and The Miracle Worker. It was Arthur Penns film of the latter (1962) that brought her back to movies and to a working of raw emotion, torn between independence and her bond with Helen Keller, great enough to justify the dissatisfaction with her early films. The Oscar for that part was irrelevant to its frightening complexity. As well as nursing the performance of Patty Duke, she so dramatized the struggle between liberty and discipline that she probably helped reveal Penn’s own talent to himself. She was again excellent as the agonized wife in Jack Clavton's The Pumpkin Eater (64); reminiscent of Robert Mitchum as the realist in Ford’s Seven Women (66); as the attempted suicide in Pollack’s The Slender Thread (66); and so w'earilv curt as Mrs.
Robinson in The Graduate (68, Mike Nichols) as to throw the film off balance. She plainly needed large parts and demanding directors, for as the mother of Young Winston (72, Richard Attenborough) she got aw'ay with dutiful gestures, but she may think more highly of the theatre, where she played Golda Meir in an earnest tribute. She was out of place on The Hindenburg (75, Robert Wise), but delightful tangoing with her husband, Mel Brooks, in his Silent Movie (76). She seemed to go along with the silliness of The Turning Point (77, Herbert Ross), though her dedicated attempts to take up a ballet position—always forestalled by the cutting—hinted at a camp comic potential. A mad Bette Davis movie was lurk¬ing within Ross’s dull tidiness, and Bancroft was the actress who might have rescued it.
In 1980, she acted in and also directed the uncertain Fatso. She made a fine cameo as the actress Madge Kendal in The Elephant Man (80, David Lynch—a Brooks film); she played with her husband in the misguided To Be or Not to Be (83, Alan Johnson); was very funny as the mother in Garbo Talks (84, Sidney Lumet); Agnes of God (85, Norman Jewison); was badly overdone as the mother in 'Night, Mother (86, Tom Moore); as I lelen Hanff in 84 Charing Cross Road (87, David |ones); Torch Song Trilogi/ (88. Paul Bogart); Bert Rigby. You’re a Fool (89, Carl Reiner); Broadway Bound (91, Bogart); and Malice (93, Harold Becker).
She is close to automatic casting in grand-old- lady roles (plus women in high office), which is fine, yet a loss—for she has the gusto for high comedy still: Point of No Return (93, |ohn Bad- ham); Air. Jones (93, Mike Figgis); The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (94. Ken Cameron); doing Paddy Chavefskv in The Mother (94, Simon Curtis); How to Make an American Quilt (95, Jocelyn Moorhouse); Home for the Holidays (95, Jodie Foster); Dracula. Dead and Loving It (95, Brooks); The Sunchaser (96, Michael Cimino); Homecoming (96, Mark Jean); G.I Jane (97, Ridley Scott); Critical Care (97, Lumet); Great Expectations (98. Alfonso Cuaron); Deep in My Heart (99, Anita W. Addison); Keeping the Faith (00, Edward Norton); Up at the Villa (00, Philip Haas); In Search of Peace (00, Richard Trank); Haven (01. John Gray); Heartbreakers (01, David Mirldn).
On July 1, 1953 she married Martin May, but divorced on February 13, 1957).
Later she was married to Mel Brooks, August 5, 1964. The cpuple hadone child, Maximilian.
