Appreciation: Anne Bancroft

She lay down on the bed, and her svelte leg made an inverted V, framing poor Benjamin Braddock. Against the bleak will of such a woman, the young man was no match--just a light lunch for the spider queen. That seduction scene from The Graduate showed the uses to which ANNE BANCROFT, 73, who died last week of uterine cancer, could apply her fierce intelligence and bold sexuality. As the predatory mother figure Mrs. Robinson, Bancroft (though she was only six years older than her co-star Dustin Hoffman) created a Francis Bacon portrait of brains gone to waste, and lust as...

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