The Anne Bancroft Collection Celebrates Her Career In December

Disc Announcements, News

If you live in a big city, there’s a chance that a nearby museum or cinema society will do amazing tributes to actors or directors. They’ll mix the big hits with the obscure gems to give a full picture of their talent on the screen. And if you don’t live in the big city, you’re stuck staring at schedule and wishing you were there. The Anne Bancroft Collection is a wonderful film festival in a Blu-ray boxset from the Oscar winner best known as the tempting Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate. The boxset includes 8 films from all points of her career including her directorial effort Fatso. Mel Brooks curates this illustrious retrospective dedicated to his late wife. You can spend a weekend indulging in her finest hours without having to travel cross country to a museum’s screening room. The Anne Bancroft Collection comes out December 10th so it’s just in time for a holiday present consideration. Here’s the press release from Shout! Factory:

SHOUT! FACTORY CELEBRATES
THE DAZZLING ANNE BANCROFT
ON DECEMBER 10, 2019 WITH
THE ANNE BANCROFT COLLECTION

Los Angeles, CA – Celebrate the extraordinary film career of actress/writer/director Anne Bancroft in the first-ever collection of her most iconic performances, The Anne Bancroft Collection, on Blu-ray™ December 10th from Shout! Factory. From Annie Sullivan to Mrs. Robinson, and from Helene Hanff to Anna Bronski, this Oscar®-winning* and profoundly versatile actress delivered some of the most poignant and sharply comic characters in modern film.

The collection, curated by Bancroft’s husband, the inimitable writer/director/producer Mel Brooks, includes the films Don’t Bother To Knock (1952), The Miracle Worker (1962), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), Fatso (1980), To Be Or Not To Be (1983), and for the first time on Blu-ray™, Agnes Of God (1985), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987). Beautifully packaged with a wealth of bonus features, The Anne Bancroft Collection also includes a new 20-page booklet with an essay by film writer Alicia Malone, that delves into Bancroft’s childhood, early career, and her most profound work.
Born in the Bronx as Anna Maria Louisa Italiano on September 17, 1931, she had an early flair for entertaining a crowd. Taking the stage name Anne Bancroft, she made her silver screen debut in 1952 alongside Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe in Don’t Bother To Knock, earning praise for her turn as a lounge singer.

In 1962, after playing Helen Keller’s beloved teacher Annie Sullivan on stage, Bancroft reprised her role on film, winning the Oscar® for Best Lead Actress.* This was Bancroft’s first Oscar® nomination out of five, and would be her only win, although she would also garner three BAFTAs, two Tony Awards and two Emmys during her career.

It was around this time when Anne Bancroft met her future husband Mel Brooks, whom she would marry in 1964. In 1967, at the age of 35, she appeared on the big screen as the sultry Mrs. Robinson, across from Dustin Hoffman. The Graduate was her first bona fide box office hit, and the now-iconic role won Anne Bancroft a third Academy Award® nomination.* She then appeared in the Jack Clayton-directed The Pumpkin Eater, in which she played a depressed housewife and earned the film’s only Academy Award® nomination*.

In 1980, when female directors were very scarce, just 16 in the years between 1967 and 1980, Bancroft wrote and directed her first feature film, Fatso. A heartwarming comedy about a man caught between his health and his appetite, starring Dom DeLuise, Fatso was produced by Brooksfilms, the production company owned by Mel Brooks, who had been looking to produce movies that were a breed apart from his signature comedies.

After taking some time off to raise her young son, Max Brooks, Bancroft decided to tackle a wide range of genres and characters. There was the hilarious WWII themed To Be Or Not To Be with Mel Brooks, Agnes Of God in which she played a Mother Superior across from Jane Fonda and Meg Tilly, and 84 Charing Cross Road, in which Bancroft played Helene Hanff, a New York writer who becomes pen pals with a London bookseller.

An overdue tribute to a trailblazing artist, The Anne Bancroft Collection houses all of these films, paying homage to one of the greatest talents of her generation.

The Anne Bancroft Collection Bonus Features

Don’t Bother to Knock
Isolated Music Score (DTS-HD Mono)
Theatrical Trailer

The Pumpkin Eater
“Jeremy Mortimer on Penelope Mortimer”
“Dinah and Fergus”

The Graduate
Audio Commentary From 2007 Featuring Director Mike Nichols In Conversation With Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh
Audio Commentary From 1987 Featuring Film Scholar Howard Suber
Interview From 2015 With Actor Dustin Hoffman
Conversation From 2015 Between Producer Lawrence Turman And Screenwriter Buck Henry
Interview With Film Writer And Historian Bobbie O’Steen About Editor Sam O’Steen’s Work On The Graduate
Students Of The Graduate, A Short Documentary From 2007 On The Film’s Influence
The Graduate At 25, A 1992 Featurette On The Making Of The Film Featuring Interviews With Actors Dustin Hoffman And Katharine Ross, Producer Lawrence Turman, And Screenwriter Buck Henry
Interview With Mike Nichols By Barbara Walters, From A 1966 Episode Of NBC’s Today Show
Excerpt From A 1970 Appearance By Singer-Songwriter Paul Simon On The Dick Cavett Show
Screen Tests: Tony Bill And Jennifer Leak, Robert Lipton And Cathy Carpenter, Dustin Hoffman And Katharine Ross
Trailer

Fatso
Looking Back On Fatso With Producers Stuart Cornfeld And Mel Brooks
Interview With Film Historian Maya Montañez Smukler
Image Gallery
Press Kit

To Be Or Not To Be
“Brooks and Bancroft: A Perfect Pair”
“How Serious Can Mel Brooks Really Get?”
Profiles
To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Trivia!
Mel Brooks Trailers
Trailers
Isolated Score Track (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1)

*1962: Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Miracle Worker; 1964: Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Pumpkin Eater (nominated); 1967: Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Graduate (nominated); 1977: Best Actress in a Leading Role, The Turning Point (nominated); 1985: Best Actress in a Leading Role, Agnes Of God (nominated)

About Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory, LLC is a diversified multi-platform media company devoted to producing, uncovering, preserving and revitalizing the very best of pop culture. Founders Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos have spent their entire careers sharing their music, television and film favorites with discerning consumers the world over. Shout! Factory’s entertainment offerings serve up feature films, classic and contemporary TV series, animation, live music and comedy specials. In addition, Shout! Factory maintains a vast entertainment distribution network which delivers culturally relevant programming, movie and audio content to all the leading digital service providers in North America and across multiple platforms. Shout! Factory owns and operates Shout! Studios, Scream Factory, Shout! Factory Kids, Shout! Factory Films, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Timeless Media Group and Shout! Factory TV. These riches are the result of a creative acquisition mandate that has established the company as a hotbed of cultural preservation and commercial reinvention. Shout! Factory is based in Los Angeles, California. For more on Shout! Factory, visit shoutfactory.com.

Joe Corey is the writer and director of "Danger! Health Films" currently streaming on Night Flight and Amazon Prime. He's the author of "The Seven Secrets of Great Walmart People Greeters." This is the last how to get a job book you'll ever need. He was Associate Producer of the documentary "Moving Midway." He's worked as local crew on several reality shows including Candid Camera, American's Most Wanted, Extreme Makeover Home Edition and ESPN's Gaters. He's been featured on The Today Show and CBS's 48 Hours. Dom DeLuise once said, "Joe, you look like an axe murderer." He was in charge of research and programming at the Moving Image Archive.