Sometimes an actor is lucky enough to find one role for which they will always be remembered, which can be both a blessing and a curse. For Anne Bancroft it was her turn as the angry, seductive Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" (1967). In a career that has spanned some five decades and has encompassed parts as varied as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and the sight-impaired teacher of Helen Keller, this chameleonic, husky-voiced performer seems frozen in time as the extremely peeved and aggressive older female who beds her daughter's boyfriend. It was a performance filled with comedy tinged with an underlying despair, a multilayered examination of a woman that has only deepened with time and remains as one of the great performances of that decade.
Born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents, she enrolled at NYC's American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1948. Shortly after completing the two-year program, she adopted the stage name Anne Marno and soon found work in live television, a training ground which she found more helpful than any drama class. Hollywood soon beckoned and under orders from Darryl F Zanuck, she adopted the surname of Bancroft. She has admitted that during her early years in California she was more interested in becoming a movie star than an actress, but the films in which she was cast were often forgettable at best (e.g., "Demetrius and the Gladiator" 1954). Returning to NYC, Bancroft became a member of the Actors Studio and adopting "the Method" resulted in richer work. Under the guidance of director Arthur Penn, she delivered back-to-back Tony-winning stage performances, first opposite Henry Fonda in the love story "Two for the Seesaw" (1958) and then in the star-making role of Annie Sullivan in "The Miracle Worker" (1959). In a rare instance of Hollywood using the original stage players, Bancroft and co-star Patty Duke recreated their roles in Penn's 1962 feature film version of "The Miracle Worker" and both picked up Academy Awards for their mutual efforts.
Despite this acclaim, Bancroft continued to divide her time between the stage and screen. She offered a strong turn as an unhappily married woman in "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964) which earned her the best actress award at Cannes and a second Oscar nomination. In John Ford's "Seven Women" (1965), she replaced an ailing Patricia Neal as a physician who sacrifices herself to a Mongol warlord in order to save the residents of a religious mission. That same year, she was effective as a would-be suicide in "The Slender Thread" (1965). After earning her third Oscar nomination for "The Graduate" (1967), Bancroft was offscreen for five years, during which she headlined a well-received Emmy-winning variety special "Annie, the Women in the Life of a Man" (CBS, 1970) and gave birth to her only son (by second husband Mel Brooks).
Returning to features, she was cast as Churchill's American-born mother in the middling biopic "Young Winston" (1972) and was teamed with Jack Lemmon in the screechy version of Neil Simon's "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" (1974). Miscast as a grande dame in "The Hindenburg" (1975), Bancroft fared better in as an aging ballerina facing old rivalries with her best friend (Shirley MacLaine) in the high entertaining, if soap operaish "The Turning Point" (1977), for which she picked up a fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Having trained at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women, Bancroft made her debut behind the camera with "Fatso" (1980), a comedy-drama about an overweight man (Dom DeLuise) and his determination to diet. Working from her own script, she fashioned a rather uneven movie and under her own direction, offered one of her least successful performances as DeLuise's shrill sister. Bouncing back, Bancroft offered a nicely formed cameo as actress Madge Kendal in David Lynch's version of "The Elephant Man" (also 1980).
Teaming with Mel Brooks, she starred in a 1984 remake of the Ernst Lubitsch 1942 classic "To Be or Not to Be". Undertaking roles originated by Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, the offscreen husband and wife worked well together and the second version was quite humorous if less heartfelt. By her next film, the actress was shifting to character roles, playing the first of several Jewish mothers in "Garbo Talks" (1984) although she picked up a fifth Best Actress Oscar nomination for her tough-talking mother superior in "Agnes of God" (1985). Bancroft was quite touching as the feisty writer who conducts an epistolary love affair in "84 Charing Cross Road" (1986) and offered some moments of both high comedy and seriousness as Harvey Fierstein's nagging mother in "Torch Song Trilogy" (1988).
As the 90s dawned, though, her transformation to feature supporting actress was complete. Although she often gave finely tuned, nuanced performances, Bancroft was relegated to secondary status. Parts as diverse as the woman who polishes the finesse of a female assassin in "Point of No Return" (1993) or the pot-smoking Glady Joe in "How to Make an American Quilt" (1995) allowed her screen time but barely tapped into her capabilities. Even a comic cameo as a gypsy, ironically named after the great screen star Maria Ouspenskaya, in Brooks' "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" (1995) hinted at her full potential.
She had her moments as a ballsy senator in "G.I. Jane" (1997) and was delightfully theatrical as the Miss Haversham character in the modern day "Great Expectations" (1998) but neither could compare with her earlier work. It took television to offer Bancroft three-dimensional roles which reminded viewers just what she could do with a meaty role. In 1992, she earned dual Emmy nominations for her turn as a confessed murderer in "Mrs. Cage" (PBS) and as the playwright's mother, reminiscing about her night of dancing with George Raft in "Neil Simon's Broadway Bound" (ABC). Two years later, she again offered a pair of performances that had critics raving. Under old-age makeup, Bancroft embodied the centenarian titular character in "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" (CBS, for which she earned another Emmy nomination). She also starred as a 66-year-old widow determined to return to work in the PBS remake of Paddy Chayefsky's "The Mother" and perfectly delineated the character's mixture of fierceness and fragility. Bancroft further excelled as the estranged grandmother of four children who trek cross-country to visit her in "Homecoming" (USA Network, 1996) and delivered an Emmy-winning turn as a white woman reuniting with her black daughter (a child of rape) in the based-on-fact "Deep in My Heart" (CBS, 1999).
While the actress periodically speaks of retirement, she has fortunately continued to work, offering scene-stealing performances as an overbearing Jewish mother in "Keeping the Faith" and a glamorous expatriate in 1930s Italy in "Up at the Villa" (both 2000), and an Emmy-nominated performance as the feisty mother of Jewish journalist Ruth Gruber in the 2001 CBS miniseries "Haven." In 2002 she returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, appearing in Edward Albee's "Occupant," inspired by the success of her husband's "The Producers," which he turned into a stage show at her suggestion. She then played the aging contessa who finds gigolos to enliven the life of a widowed American movie star in Italy in the 2003 telepic adaptation of Tennesse Williams' novella "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone."
Although she may have been haunted by the image of Mrs. Robinson, Bancroft, who died in 2005 after a battle with cancer, created a gallery of other complex and intriguing characters, a true tribute to her talent and versatility. As for Mrs> Robinson, Bancroft understood the character intimately: "Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be — and that we're ordinary." It was something Bancroft would never have to face herself. In both her art and her life, the actress was never ordinary.