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In Reply to: Help me out here posted by Victor Khomenko on June 8, 2005 at 15:18:07:
Really.Bancroft's iconic roles would have to be Annie Sullivan in the Miracle Worker (film & Broadway) and Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Her best Broadway role may have been her first, in Two For The Seesaw, opposite Henry Fonda. She won the Tony for it, and another one two years later for her stage perfrmance in Miracle Worker. SHe would go on to win as Oscar for the role as well.
But it's her role as the wife in Jack Clayton's The Pumpkin Easter that may have been her finest performance on film. Hardly anyone has seen this movie nowdays, and I personally haven't seen it in about 10 years, but I remember Bancroft in this film vividly. Peter Finch plays her casually philandering husband in this tale of loneliness and failed marriage. Bancroft plays the kind of woman, wrapped up in her children and her role as wife, that I normally have little sympathy for...but her acting in this part breaks my heart.
(I think director Jack Clayton is over-due for a revival. He made some fine films: Room At The Top, The Pumpkin Eater, The Innocents [a personal fave of mine and one of the best ghost stories ever filmed, based on Henry James], Our Mother's House, and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne [great roles for Maggie Smith & Bob Hoskins].)
The best role of Bancroft's late career was probably the Broadway run of Golda.
But you're right - Bancroft's potential was never fully exploited in movies. She was gifted, intelligent and had a strong screen presence, maybe too strong. I always felt she had a particularly expressive face - she could speak volumes without ever opening her mouth. She was beautiful but not your typical screen goddess. Hollywood never really learned how to use her and neither did the young turk directors emerging in the 60's (Mike Nichols excepted). Bancroft herself seemed mostly uninterested in playing the game, especially after she marrie Mel in 1964 (I think it was 64). She never quite found a home in independent film either. After the 1960's she seldom had first rate material to work with.
Here are other Bancroft films where she is quite good:
Seven Women, John Ford's last (flawed but interesting) film. She plays a liberated physician working in China.
Young Winston, where she plays Winston's adored mother. This was Richard Attenborough's (sp) second or third film, and I enjoyed it at the time, especially Simon Ward as the youthful hero.
The Elephant Man. Bancroft in just a cameo.
84 Charing Cross Road, opposite Anthony Hopkins.
Agnes Of God. She's goood in it, but I don't like the film. Ditto 'Night Mother, although this is more Spacek's movie.
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Follow Ups
- Easy. The lead in The Pumpkin Eater. - Harmonia 20:26:29 06/08/05 (0)
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