Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
Issue #25
Anne Bancroft left behind a legacy when she died at 73
By Rebecca Flint-Marx
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 4:38pm
Perhaps it’s not so much a sign of Hollywood sexism as a testament to her effortlessly commanding presence that Anne Bancroft was not even six years older than Dustin Hoffman when she was cast as Mrs. Robinson opposite Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. As the “older” woman who seduces wee Benjamin to feed both her ego and her emptiness, Bancroft took what could have been an insultingly two-dimensional stereotype — the withered suburban housewife, jealous of her daughter’s vitality and beauty — and made the film’s most compelling and mysterious character. Watching Bancroft’s Robinson in post-coital recline, it’s easy to imagine her discarding Benjamin like just one more nylon stocking. But 38 years after The Graduate’s release, it’s the devastated look on Bancroft’s face after Benjamin rejects her that resonates as much as, if not more than, the final shot of Hoffman and Katharine Ross riding off on a bus, wondering what the hell they’ve just done.
Although Bancroft had a long, award-winning career that featured triumphant work on both the stage and screen, it’s The Graduate that she’s most often identified with. In the days following her death from uterine cancer on June 6, you could almost hear obituary writers nationwide raising their glasses and declaring, “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.” And it’s fair to say that Bancroft’s death produced uncharacteristic mourning from people who don’t waste a great deal of emotion on celebrities. Maybe it was that she possessed a rare combination of wit, intelligence, beauty, talent, class, and, most importantly, dignity so rarely glimpsed in most screen icons, let alone regular people. Maybe it was the feeling that she had a deep-rooted sense of humor, as evidenced by her marriage to Mel Brooks, who had been her husband for more than 40 years when Bancroft died at the age of 73. Or maybe it was the fact that her first attempt at establishing an acting career ended in failure, or at least retreat.
An Italian-American daughter of the Bronx, Bancroft went west to Hollywood when she was barely out of her teens and spent five frustrating years being cast in B and C movies while enduring a first marriage that ended in divorce. Following her move back to New York, she won a role opposite Henry Fonda in a Broadway play called Two for the Seesaw, despite having almost no stage experience. She won a Tony for her work, and with it, the promise of a more fulfilling career.
Bancroft went on to give indelible performances. She won a Tony and an Academy Award for the stage and screen versions of The Miracle Worker, in which she starred opposite Patty Duke. She played desperate, complicated housewives in The Pumpkin Eater and The Slender Thread and traveled to Israel to get to know Golda Meir before her Tony-nominated stage portrayal of the Israeli prime minister in Golda. Late in her life, Bancroft became known to younger audiences with her role as Gwyneth Paltrow’s fantastically deranged aunt in Alfonso Cuaron’s update of Great Expectations.
Arthur Penn, who directed Bancroft in The Miracle Worker and Two for the Seesaw, said of the actress, “More happens in her face in 10 seconds than happens in most women’s faces in 10 years.” An even more concise and equally eloquent tribute could be found in Midtown Manhattan in the days following Bancroft’s death when, in honor of her passing, Broadway dimmed its lights. In death, Bancroft’s incandescence will inevitably fade in our memories but will never be snuffed out entirely.
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