LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Anne Bancroft: Mel Brooks
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Anne Bancroft hoped that her success would win her better parts. She appeared with Peter Finch in the 1964 British film The Pumpkin Eater, Harold Pinter's adaptation of Penelope Mortimer's novel about a woman driven to nervous breakdown by her husband's casual philandering. During the making of the film, which won her a second Oscar nomination, she met and married the producer and writer Mel Brooks.
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Synopsis: Mel Brooks and his real-life wife Anne Bancroft play Frederick and Anna Bronski, musical comedy stars in 1939 Poland. The highlight of the Bronskis' act is Frederick's imitation of Adolf Hitler, but he is forced to eliminate this turn for fear of offending the Nazis. Meanwhile, Anna enters into aRead More
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Bancroft shines as ascerbic, witty, eccentric Jewish-American TV writer Helene Hanff, who carries on a wonderful 19-year correspondence with quiet, reserved London bookseller Anthony Hopkins (terrific, as usual) and his colleagues. Bancroft is outstanding—funny, touching and surprising. She maximizes all the sly wit in the screenplay, making this film—which has little dialogue and is mostly told through the actual correspondence—a treat. Bancroft won the Best Actress BAFTA while Judi Dench (as Hopkins’ wife) and screenwriter Hugh Whitemore were ... nominated; Hopkins won Best Actor at the Moscow Film Fest. This enjoyable flick was produced by Anne’s devoted husband, Mel Brooks.
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Winning her first Emmy Award in 1970, Bancroft starred in Annie, The Women in the Life of a Man, which ... featured her husband Mel Brooks. She took some time off from acting after the birth of their son, Max, in 1972. Showing her range as a performer, she returned to the big screen in the Neil Simon comedy, The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), with Jack Lemmon, and in the historical drama, The Hindenburg (1975), with George C. Scott. Starring an aging ballerina, Bancroft starred opposite Shirley MacLaine in the drama The Turning Point (1977). That same year, she played the first female prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, on Broadway in Golda, which reunited her with director Arthur Penn. Bancroft received a Tony Award nomination for her portrait of this famed world leader.
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Bancroft is survived by comedian-director-producer Mel Brooks, her husband of 41 years, and their son, author Maximilian Brooks. She acted in three of Brooks' comedies ("Silent Movie," "To Be or Not to Be"' and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It") and was credited with encouraging him to adapt his screenplay ''The Producers" into a Broadway musical. ''The Producers" became a box office smash in 2001, and took home 12 Tonys. In 2002, Bancroft returned to her theatre roots to play sculptor Louise Nevelson in Edward Albee's "Occupant," but the show closed during previews when Bancroft contracted pneumonia.
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With the exception of her 1970 Emmy Award-winning television showcase, "Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man," Bancroft withdrew from acting for five years after the release of "The Graduate." Her son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.
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