Well folks, I'm here to tell you that Anne Bancroft is Da Bomb! We had a delightful lunch, just the two of us, and talked about all manner of stuff. She told me about how pleased she was to be put under contract to Fox (she was so young her mother had to come along for the signing) and go right into "Don't Bother to Knock" with Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe. She LOVED Victor Mature, with whom she co-starred in "Demetrius and the Gladiators." Her real career begins, of course, back in New York on the stage when she co-starred with Henry Fonda in "Two For the Seeesaw." She met her third husband, Mr. Kaminsky, when she was doing "The Miracle Worker."
"Basically he stalked me. I didn't find out right away. I just thought at first that it was such a wonderful coincidence that he was always around." Moreover "When I saw Mel for the first time, I thought 'He looks like my father and sounds like my mother.' So I wanted him!"
Patricia Neal, a close friend of hers, was supposed to star in "Seven Women," and had, in fact, shot for three weeks, before she had her stroke. So Anne took over without even reading the script. She said there was a band on the set at all times, "and you always knew when Ford had arrived because they would play 'Roll Out the Barrel' and songs like that." I told her many critics had pointed out that he directed her in that film as if she were John Wayne. "Oh, better than that," she said "He even called me 'Duke'!"
Mel is in New York preparing a musical version of "The Producers." So I suggested some casting: Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock, and Chip Zien as Leo Bloom. They've already been talking to Nathan, but she took Chip's name down for future reference.
She didn't use a body double for the nude shots in "The Graduate."
"There's a whole sequence of me nude," she said. In the finished film there are only brief flashes. She said the keyto Mrs. Robinson was that she was very disappointed with her life, and was taking it out on the world through sex.
So what did you think of that kid playing opposite you?" I asked.
"Well at first," she said "I thought THIS is who you give me?" Then she let out with a great, deep, roaring Anne Bancroft laugh.
(Don't worry -- I snapped her for "Ehrensteinland.")
