American actress Anne Bancroft dies in New York

NEW YORK (- Actress Anne Bancroft, the husky-voiced beauty who rose from an Italian neighborhood in New York to become a Hollywood star immortalized as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in 1967's "The Graduate" has died.

She was 73.

Bancroft died in New York of uterine cancer, John Barlow, a spokesman for Bancroft's husband, comedian and director Mel Brooks, said on Tuesday.

Barlow said the Oscar-winning American actress died on Monday evening at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Broadway theaters were planning to dim their marquees in her honor before Wednesday's shows.

Born Anna Maria Italiano in 1931 in New York's Bronx borough, she got her start in movies in the 1950s.

She won an Oscar for her 1962 film "The Miracle Worker," where she played Annie Sullivan, the extraordinary teacher to blind, deaf and speechless Helen Keller in the movie directed by Arthur Penn.

Over her long career, she garnered a further four Academy Award nominations for "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964), "The Graduate" (1967), "The Turning Point" (1977), and "Agnes of God" (1985).

She also won two Tony Awards for her work on the Broadway stage, including one for the stage version of "The Miracle Worker" in 1960.

FLASH OF STOCKINGED LEG

In 1964, she married comedian and director Brooks, whom she met when the struggling comedy writer attended a taping of a Perry Como TV special in which she was singing and dancing.

Bancroft began her acting studies at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts as a 17 year old and found work in the early days of live television.

After being lured to Hollywood by producer Darryl Zanuck and working in more than a dozen largely forgettable features, she returned to New York and became a member of the famed Actors Studio and embraced the "Method" acting popularized by such stars of the day as Marlon Brando.

Directed by Penn, she won a Tony in 1958 starring opposite Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seasaw," and followed that with her star turn in "The Miracle Worker."

She teamed up with Brooks to star in a 1984 remake of the 1942 comedy classic "To Be or Not to Be," by Ernst Lubitsch.

The sultry, dark-haired beauty evinced intelligence, yet might be best remembered for the flash of stockinged leg and cold, calculated seduction of her daughter's boyfriend in "The Graduate." The movie spawned the classic Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack hit "Mrs Robinson."

Director Penn once said of her, "She's made of heavy-duty Bronx material ... a kid off the streets."

Bancroft is survived by Brooks, her son Max Brooks and grandson Henry Michael Brooks.

Actress Anne Bancroft Dies at Age 73

NEW YORK - Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" but achieved greater fame as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate," has died. She was 73.

She died of uterine cancer on Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital, John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, Mel Brooks, said Tuesday.

Bancroft was awarded the Tony for creating the role on Broadway of poor-sighted Annie Sullivan, the teacher of the deaf and blind Keller. She repeated her portrayal in the film version.

Yet despite her Academy Award and four other nominations, "The Graduate" overshadowed her other achievements.

Dustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him at her house: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"

Bancroft complained to a 2003 interviewer: "I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about `The Miracle Worker.' We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world. ... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

Mike Nichols, who directed "The Graduate," called Bancroft a masterful performer.

"Her combination of brains, humor, frankness and sense were unlike any other artist," Nichols said in a statement. "Her beauty was constantly shifting with her roles, and because she was a consummate actress she changed radically for every part."

Patty Duke, who played Keller to Bancroft's Sullivan, said "there aren't superlatives enough" to describe what working with Bancroft was like. "On most nights we performed it felt as if we were one," she said.

Bancroft's beginnings in Hollywood were unimpressive. She was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1952 and given the glamour treatment. She had been acting in television as Anne Marno (her real name: Anna Maria Louise Italiano), but it sounded too ethnic for movies. The studio gave her a choice of names; she picked Bancroft "because it sounded dignified."

After a series of B pictures, she escaped to Broadway in 1958 and won her first Tony opposite Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seesaw." The stage and movie versions of "The Miracle Worker" followed. Her other Academy nominations: "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); "The Graduate" (1967); "The Turning Point" (1977); "Agnes of God" (1985).

Bancroft became known for her willingness to assume a variety of portrayals. She appeared as Winston Churchill's American mother in TV's "Young Winston"; as Golda Meir in "Golda" onstage; a gypsy woman in the film "Love Potion No. 9"; and a centenarian for the TV version of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."

After an unhappy three-year marriage to builder Martin May, Bancroft married comedian-director-producer Brooks in 1964. They met when she was rehearsing a musical number, "Married I Can Always Get," for the Perry Como television show, and a voice from offstage called: "I'm Mel Brooks."

In a 1984 interview she said she told her psychiatrist the next day: "Let's speed this process up — I've met the right man. See, I'd never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple." A son, Maximilian, was born in 1972.

Bancroft appeared in three of Brooks' comedies: "Silent Movie," a remake of "To Be or Not to Be" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

She also was the one who suggested that he make a stage musical of his movie "The Producers." She explained that when he was afraid of writing a full-blown musical, including the music, "I sent him to an analyst."

When Bancroft watched Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick rehearse "The Producers," she realized how much she had missed the theater. In 2002 she returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, appearing in Edward Albee's "Occupant."

She was born Sept. 17, 1931, in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents. She recalled scrawling "I want to be an actress" on the back fence of her flat when she was 9. Her father derided her ambitions, saying, "Who are we to dream these dreams?" Her mother was the dreamer, encouraging her daughter in 1958 to enroll at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts.

Live television drama was flourishing in New York in the early 1950s, and Bancroft appeared in 50 shows in two years. "It was the greatest school that one could go to," she said in 1997. "You learn to be concentrated and focused."

In mid-career Bancroft attended the Actors Studio to heighten her understanding of the acting craft. Later she studied at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women at UCLA. In 1980 she directed a feature, "Fatso," starring Dom DeLuise. It received modest attention.

Among her notable portrayals: a potential suicide in "The Slender Thread"; Mary Magdalene in Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth"; actress Madge Kindle in "The Elephant Man"; Anthony Hopkins' pen pal in "84 Charing Cross Road"; feminist U.S. senator in "G.I. Jane"; the Miss Havisham role in a modernized "Great Expectations."

Despite all her memorable performances, Bancroft was remembered most for Mrs. Robinson. In 2003 she admitted that nearly everyone discouraged her from undertaking the role "because it was all about sex with a younger man." She viewed the character as having unfulfilled dreams and having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband.

She added: "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."