Anne Bancroft Dies of Cancer at 73

Actress Anne Bancroft, a two-time Tony Award winner for Best Actress in a Play and the wife of Mel Brooks, the creator of The Producers, died of uterine cancer yesterday at age 73.

Born Anna Maria Italiano on September 17, 1931, Bancroft made her Broadway debut in Two for the Seesaw in 1958, for which she earned her first Tony as well as a Theatre World Award. She won her second Tony two years later for The Miracle Worker (1959), in which she played Annie Sullivan opposite the Helen Keller of Patty Duke. Her other Broadway credits include Mother Courage and Her Children (1963); a revival of The Little Foxes (1967); Golda (1977), which earned her another Tony nomination; and Duet For One (1981). More recently, she produced the Off-Broadway show Squeeze Box, starring Ann Randolph.

Over the course of her career, Bancroft starred in such acclaimed movies as The Pumpkin Eater, The Graduate, The Turning Point, and Garbo Talks; in the film versions of the plays The Miracle Worker (earning an Academy Award for Best Actress), The Prisoner of Second Avenue, ‘Night, Mother, Agnes of God, Torch Song Trilogy, and 84 Charing Cross Road; and in a television version of Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound.

Bancroft was married to Martin May from 1953 to 1957. She married Brooks in 1964; their son, Max, was born in 1972. In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by her mother and two sisters, Joanne and Phyllis.