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"I did what I could, and
what I wanted to do."
Anne Bancroft, 1931 - 2005
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Anne Bancroft was born Anna Maria
Louisa Italiano on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, New York to
Michael (a patternmaker) and Mildred (telephone operator) Italiano.
She has two sisters Joanne (older) and Phyllis (younger).
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Mrs. Bancroft has an early love of
performing and began to take acting and dancing lessons at the age
of four.
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After High School, she planned on
becoming a lab technician, but her mother convinced her to attend
the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts instead.
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Her professional career in acting came
in 1951 at the age of twenty, when she began to appear in episodes
of television drama series such as Suspense, Danger,
The Adventures of Ellery Quinn and Lights Out.
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It was not until the following year
that she went to Hollywood and made it to the big screen in her
movie debut as Lyn Lesly in Don’t Bother to Knock. This
began a career in movies that would span the next 50 fifty years.
During the early and mid-fifties, she began to take on more movie
roles, proving her acting skills and versatility to the moviegoers
and the movie studios. However, she was a contract baby, and the
studio heads at 20th Century Fox dictated her
professional career. In fact, it was the studios that made her
change her name to Anne Bancroft. They gave her a book of names and
told her to change it because her real name it sounded too ethnic.
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After she fulfilled her contract with
the movie studio, she turned her attention to the light of
Broadway. In 1958 she starred in the play Two for the Seesaw
and won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in
addition, she also won the 1958 Theater World Award. She followed
this up by receiving her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a
Play for The Miracle Worker, as well as a New York Drama
Critics Award for this role. It was during these early years in
Hollywood that she tried to find her soul mate. She married
builder/construction worker Martin A. May in July 1953, but the
marriage only lasted until early (February) 1957.
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She New York City once again and
returned to Hollywood under her own terms. After perfecting the
role of Anne Sullivan on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, she
was now starring in a film adaptation of the same name playing
opposite Patty Duke in the role of Helen Keller. After perfecting
this role over the past few years, she was awarded the Academy Award
for Best Actress. [Note: She was not able to attend the awards
ceremony because she was appearing on Broadway at the time (Mother
Courage and Her Children) and was given her a week later in the
theater she was performing before the show. Joan Crawford accepted
the award in her absence.] She was also awarded the BAFTA Film
Award for Best Foreign Actress and the NBR Award for Best Actress.
In addition, she was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion
Picture Actress – Drama.
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It did not take much time for this
dynamic actress to be recognized again by the movie community and
was nominated for another Academy Award for her role in the 1964
film The Pumpkin Eater. She also won the Cannes Film Festival
Best Actress Award, the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an
Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama , the BAFTA Award for Best
Foreign Actress for this role. 1964 was also a big year for her
personal life. She married then comedy writer and comedian Mel
Brooks in August of that year. The two lovers got married at City
Hall. [Note: They met at a talk show a year earlier and Mr. Brooks
followed her into a restaurant to “accidentally” bump into her.]
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Anne Bancroft’s truly memorable role
came in 1967 as Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate.
Her role as the older woman seductress who bewilders a young looking
Dustin Hoffman has become a movie classic. The role also led to
another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading
Role. Her other award nominations for this role include the BAFTA
Film Award for Best Actress. She also won some awards for her role,
including the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress -
Musical/Comedy. [Note: Although Bancroft played a much older female,
in reality she was only six years older than the 30 year old
Hoffman].
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Besides her movie career, she returned
briefly to the stage in 1967 to appear in a short run of Little
Foxes at Lincoln Center, and then returned to Lincoln Center a
year later to appear in A Cry of Players.
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After breaking into “show business” in
the early 1950’s, she returned to her beginning on the small screen
and starred in the variety show, Annie, the Women in the Life of
a Man and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety or Musical
Program.
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In 1972, Mel and Anne had their only
child, a son, Maximillian (Max) Brooks who became comedy writer. He
is most well known for his writing on Saturday Night Live.
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During the 1970’s spent time with her
new son and husband, but also managed to perform on Broadway, as
well as appear in a few movies for the silver screen and
television. Her movie highlights of this decade include Young
Winston (1972 – nominated for NAFTA Film Award for Best Actress)
and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975 – nominated for BAFTA
Film Award for Best Actress). Her greatest roles of the decade, was
her Oscar nominated role in 1977 as Emma Jacklin in The Turning
Point (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a
Leading Role, BAFTA Film Award for Best Actress, Golden Globe for
Best Motion Picture Actress – Drama and won the NPR Award for Best
Actress).
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In 1977, she returned to Broadway as
Golda Meir in the play Golda and received a Tony nomination
for her role. After this run on Broadway, she only returned one for
two weeks in 1981’s Duet for One. [Note: She was set to star
in the play Occupant in 2002, but pneumonia forced her to
cancel.
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In 1980 she made her
Director/Screenwriter debut for the dark comedy movie Fatso
starring Dom DeLuise. She also continued acting, although her
performances were critically acclaimed, some of the movies were
not. The highlights of her movie career in the 1980’s include:
To Be or Not to Be (1983 – nominated, Golden Globe for Best
Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical);
Garbo Talks (1984 – nominated, Golden Globe for Best Performance
by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical); the Oscar
nominated role in Agnes of God (1985 – nominations for
Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Golden
Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture –
Drama); 84 Charing Cross Road (1987 – won the BAFTA Award for
Best Actress); and ‘Night Mother (1986 – nominated, Golden
Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture –
Drama).
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By the 1990s, Anne Bancroft began to
take on smaller roles to spend more time with her family, and also
because she felt that there were not many good scripts to be had.
However, she turned more of her focus away from the big screen and
towards television. The highlights 1990’s and the first half of the
following decade include a few Emmy nominations, including winning
the award in 1999. The high points on television from 1990 through
2005 include: Broadway Bound (1992 – nominated, Emmy Award for
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Special); Mrs.
Cage (1992 – Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries
or a Special); Oldest Living Confederate Widow (1994 – nominated,
Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a
Special); Homecoming (1996 – nominated, Screen Actor’s Guild Award
for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a TV Movie or
Miniseries); Deep In My Heart (won the Emmy Award for Outstanding
Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie); Haven (2001 –
nominated, Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a
Miniseries or a Movie); The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (nominations
for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a
Miniseries or a Movie, the Golden Sattelite Award for Best
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Miniseries or a
Motion Picture Made for Television, and the Screen Actor’s Guild
Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television
Movie or Miniseries). Her last project was adding her voice for the
character of Contessa in the movie Delgado to be released in
2005.
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She also received the American Comedy
Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and has also been awarded
a Star on the Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame.
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Anne Bancroft, at the age of 73, passed
away on June 6, 2005 at the Mount Sainai Medical Center in New York
City after a struggle with uterine cancer. She will always be
remembered.
Biography by Ian Ripley,
PopStarsPlus.com, Sr. Staff Writer
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