Anne Bancroft

Her face was familiar to us, despite the fact that since the eighties she had not been offered renowned roles and had to lavish herself on more than secondary jobs, such as the protagonist’s mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, mentor, etc. But that lack of fame was never at odds with her prestige, and it is that she had a bit of it. In fact, she is one of the few artists who has received the triple crown of interpretation, that is, the three most important awards in the world of acting: the film Oscar, the theater Tony and the television Emmy.

Anne Bancroft was actually called Anna Maria Louise Italiano and was born on September 17, 1931 in the New York neighborhood of the Bronx. As can be deduced from her name, she was the daughter of Italian immigrants – he, a tailor; she, a telephone operator–, which also fits with that face with marked angles, deep gaze and, I don’t know, something indomitable in her dark beauty. After finishing high school she wanted to pursue acting and she entered the American Academic of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan in 1948.

Under the name of Anne Marno, she made her first appearances on stage and on television, until in 1952 when she signed her first film contract with Fox. However, the name of the budding actress did not please the production company –it was too “ethnic”, they said – and proposed others for him to choose from. The actress says that she chose the last name Bancroft because she had an elegant and solemn sound. So, that year she shot her first film, Fog in the Soul , starring Marilyn Monroe . During the following years, however, she was offered mostly cheap productions, including Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), La calle desnuda (1955) or the western directed by Anthony Mann . The wild desert (1955). In 1957, somewhat disillusioned with her acting career, she left Los Angeles and returned to New York, where she worked on the stage for the next five years. On the Broadway stage he achieved important successes, the most important of which was The Miracle of Anna Sullivan , for which he won the Tony Award in 1960. Such was the repercussion of this work that Hollywood decided to take it to the movies with the same cast and director. And that was the stellar return of Anne Bancroft in 1962. The actress won an Oscar (later she would be nominated four more times) for the Arthur Penn film , and also began a very fruitful work period. In 1964 she married Mel Brooks.after a failed first marriage. That same year she stood out in I’m Always Alone (new Oscar nomination), and two years later she starred in the last film by the master John Ford , Seven Women .

That was when Anne Bancroft reached the height of popularity. In 1967 a certain Mike Nichols went behind the camera to direct it in The Graduate , a scandalous film in which an older woman seduced her daughter’s boyfriend. Curiously, whoever played the boy ( Dustin Hoffman to be exact) was really only six years younger than Bancroft. Today, the film has achieved the status of classic and, for better or worse, Anne Bancroft, who was again nominated for an Oscar, was never able to rid herself of the seductive Mrs. Robinson that she embodied in the film. And, although it is true that she never achieved such resounding success again, the actress worked in the following years in very notable films, such as the drama Young Winston(1972), by Richard Attenborough, the adventurer Hindenburg (1975), the historical Jesus of Nazareth (1977) or the romantic drama Decisive Step (1977), with his fourth nomination included. She began the eighties writing and shooting a film, Fatso (1980), although the best of her could be seen in The Elephant Man (1980), Agnes de Dios (1985) -fifth Oscar nomination-, and in her unforgettable role as Helen Hanff in The Final Letter (1987). Already in the nineties she appeared in a multitude of films, but always with very brief roles. They emphasize Mr. Jones (1993), Where love resides (1995) andGreat Expectations (1998) . And in 1999 she won an Emmy for her role in the television series ‘Deep in my Heart’. The last role of her career was the one she did in Las seductoras (2002), and last year she had to leave the shooting of Spanglish due to illness. Unfortunately, Mrs. Bancroft would no longer recover.