Here's to You Mrs Robinson

Here’s to You Mrs Robinson

Small wonder that Anne Bancroft often wondered why she was most remembered for one particular role when she had so many fine performances tucked under her belt.

Jean Stanton Posted on 5 years ago 3 minutes read

Ah, Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know, and so too do the scores of middle-aged gentleman for whom your stockinged leg and relentless seduction of gawky Benjamin fuelled their adolescent fantasies, retained forever as a fond memory. How your name has entered the modern day vernacular as a metaphor for the older experienced woman.

Anne Bancroft was 36 in 1967 when she immortalised the character, just six years older than Dustin Hoffman, The Graduate’s seductee. Doris Day had been the favourite choice for the role, and Bancroft hated the way in which she thought she looked so old in the part. It also puzzled her as to why she was best remembered for this and not her Academy Award winning role in The Miracle Worker.

With her passing this week from a long battle against cancer at the age of 72 , the lights were dimmed on Broadway and those pubescent sixties boys shed a collective tear for their lost love. However, they were not alone. In a career spanning more than forty years, and despite being remembered as the raven-haired temptress, Anne Bancroft amassed a body of work that was both prodigious and critically well received.

She appeared in John Ford’s final film, 7 Women, in 1966, a film saturated with strong female characters with Bancroft, dressed in men’s attire and the loner of the group, the toughest of them all. Heading a female run Christian Mission, alongside such cinema stalwarts as Margaret Leighton and Flora Robson, she again played a character whose strength of character included compassion and loyalty, forcing her to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Bancroft’s gift for choosing roles that exemplified flawed but human characters continued with such roles as Jenny, Lady Randolph Churchill in Young Winston (1972) , Mary Magdalene in the classic tv series Jesus of Nazareth (1977) , and alongside Shirley Maclaine in The Turning Point (1977). Her moving portrayal of the wealthy Mrs Kendal who befriends John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) helped change the public’s perception of a man who hitherto had best been known as a Victorian side-show freak, and the stern but misguided Mother Superior in Agnes of God (1985) earned her another Academy Award nomination. 1987 and 1988 brought two more of her finest performances, in 84 Charing Cross Road and Torch Song Trilogy .

Small wonder that Anne Bancroft often wondered why she was most remembered for one particular role when she had so many fine performances tucked under her belt. However, Mrs Robinson defined a moment in many people’s own lives. That the woman who played her did so by her own rules, did not succumb to the Hollywood starlet route, and consistently delivered strong and complex characters, yet demonstrated a healthy sense of humour and clearly enjoyed a successful and loving marriage only served to strengthen that place in the public’s affections.

Here’s to you Mrs Robinson.