Anne Bancroft

 ( 1931 Births ) 

After three weeks of location work on The Last Hunt (1955), a horse got out of control causing Bancroft to land hard on the horn of her western saddle. Due to hospitalization she was replaced as the Native American girl by Debra Paget; although some of her long distance shots were retained in finished film.

In 1957, Bancroft was directed by Jacques Tourneur in a David Goodis adaptation, Nightfall. In 1958, she made her Broadway theatre debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda (as the married man Gittel loves) in William Gibson's two-character play Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn. Two for the Seesaw Playbill, retrieved February 20, 2018 For the role, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Bancroft won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1960, again with playwright Gibson and director Penn, when she played Anne Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker. " 'The Miracle Worker' Broadway" Playbill, retrieved February 20, 2018 She reprised her role in the 1962 film and won the Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft. " 'The Miracle Worker' Film" tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018 As Bancroft had returned to Broadway to star in Mother Courage and Her Children, Joan Crawford accepted the Academy Awards on her behalf and later presented the award to her in New York. " 'The Miracle Worker' Article" tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018

Bancroft received a second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Pumpkin Eater (1964). "Anne Bancroft Biography" tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018 Bancroft achieved stardom when she played the starring role as Mrs. Robinson in the romantic comedy-drama The Graduate (1967). The Graduate tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018 In the film, she played an unhappily married woman who seduces the son of her husband's business partner, the much younger recent college graduate played by Dustin Hoffman. In the film, Hoffman's character later dates and falls in love with her daughter. Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate; she said in several interviews that the role overshadowed her other work. Despite her character becoming an archetype of the "older woman" role, Bancroft was only 36 years old at the time—just eight years older than her onscreen daughter Katharine Ross and six years older than Hoffman. The film, and her performance, received widespread critical acclaim, earning her a third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. A CBS television special, Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man (1970), won Bancroft an Emmy Award for her singing and acting.

Bancroft is one of ten actors to have won both an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role (as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker), and one of very few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award. This rare achievement is also known as the Triple Crown of Acting. She followed that success with a second television special, Annie and the Hoods (1974), which was telecast on ABC and featured her husband Mel Brooks as a guest star. Annie and The Hoods tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018 She made an uncredited cameo in the film Blazing Saddles (1974), directed by Brooks. She made a career comeback with the ballet drama The Turning Point (1977), followed by the neo-noir mystery film Agnes of God (1985), which earned her two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. The Turning Point tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018 Agnes of God tcm.com, retrieved February 20, 2018

Bancroft made her debut as a screenwriter and director in Fatso (1980), in which she starred with Dom DeLuise. " Fatso History" afi.com, retrieved February 21, 2018

Bancroft was the original choice to play Joan Crawford in the film Mommie Dearest (1981), but backed out and was replaced by Faye Dunaway.Fristoe, Roger. Mommie Dearest tcm.com, retrieved February 21, 2018 " Mommie Dearest History" afi.com, retrieved February 21, 2018 She was also a front-runner for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but declined so that she could act in the remake of To Be or Not to Be (1983) with Brooks.

In 1961, Bancroft met Mel Brooks at a rehearsal for Perry Como's variety show Kraft Music Hall. Bancroft and Brooks married on August 5, 1964, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau near New York City Hall, and were married until her death in 2005. Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.Carter, Maria. "How Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks Kept the Spark Alive for 41 Years" Country Living, August 9, 2017 Bancroft worked with her husband three times on the screen: dancing a tango in Brooks's Silent Movie (1976), in his remake of To Be or Not to Be (1983) and in the episode titled "Opening Night" (2004) of the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. The couple also appeared in (1995), but never appeared together again. Brooks produced the film The Elephant Man (1980), in which Bancroft acted. He was executive producer for the film 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) in which she starred. Both Brooks and Bancroft appeared in Season 6 of The Simpsons. According to the DVD commentary, when Bancroft came to record her lines for the episode "Fear of Flying", the Simpsons writers asked if Brooks had come with her (which he had); she joked, "I can't get rid of him!"

In a 2010 interview, Brooks credited Bancroft as being the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater. In the same interview, he said of their first meeting in 1961, "From that day, until her death on June 6, 2005, we were glued together." Bancroft's son, Max, said in a 2020 interview that she was "a secret, closet scientist". He said that, as a child, she read to him Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (1926) as a bedtime story.

In 2005, shortly before her death, Bancroft became a grandmother when her daughter-in-law Michelle had a boy, Henry Michael Brooks. Bancroft had a drinking problem which resulted in being absent from work often, according to Elizabeth Wilson, who was Bancroft's understudy in The Little Foxes and co-starred with her in The Graduate (1967) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975).

• List of actors with Academy Award nominations
• List of actors with more than one Academy Award nomination in the acting categories
• List of Primetime Emmy Award winners
• List of Golden Globe winners

• Anne Bancroft at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection
• Image of Sidney Poitier holding his Oscar alongside Gregory Peck, Annabella and Anne Bancroft backstage at the Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1964. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.