Best Actress: Anne Bancroft

 Fun fact: back in the day, this movie was the reason I signed up for Netflix.

via mutantoftheseas

In The Miracle Worker, Anne Bancroft plays Anne Sullivan, the woman who helped teach Helen Keller how to navigate the world around her. For practically the entire movie, we're shut up in the Keller homestead with Anne as she tries to teach Helen about the world around her and how to connect and communicate. She puts up with the almost feral behaviour of Helen (played masterfully by Patty Duke, who won an Oscar for this film, too), the indulgent behaviour of Mrs. Keller, the anti-Yankee this-heah-is-mah-house imperialism of Mr. Keller, and the toldjaso son who believes his younger half-sister is a lost cause. 

It's almost claustrophobic. There are long scenes where Anne and Helen wail on each other: Helen because she doesn't know what's happening and has learned that aggressive reaction gets the job done; Anne because she wants Helen to be treated like a sighted child, who knows that there's a whole world out there for Helen if she can only reach her. Famously, there's a nine-minute dinner sequence where these two treat the dining room like a wrestling ring. Every slap across the face is matched with equal force. Helen throws a fork across the room because she wants to use her hand, Anne puts another one in her hand. Every time Helen picks up food with her hands, Anne either bats it out of her hand or reaches into her mouth and rips it out. Helen tries to escape the room, Anne picks her up and hauls her back to her seat. All she wants is for Helen to be treated like a sighted child, and she's going to hold Helen to those standards, to teach her that she can exist in the world.

Through it all, Anne Bancroft's performance is deeply rooted in her character work. It's not a particularly flashy role aside from those few royal rumble scenes, and the deeply emotional ending where (SPOILER) Helen finally understands all the sign language when she connects the water from the pump with Anne spelling W-A-T-E-R on her hand. The restraint of Anne's performance in places is magnificent and it makes those bombastic 'fight' scenes even more exciting because you know that she's been shaken like a Coke bottle and she's ready to unleash. 

Anne was nominated against Bette Davis (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), Katharine Hepburn (Long Day's Journey into Night), Geraldine Page (Sweet Bird of Youth), and Lee Remick (Days of Wine and Roses). 

Perhaps the spectacle of the ceremony itself was more fascinating that the slew of nominees. Because, as you're likely aware, long-time rivals Bette Davis and Joan Crawford finally made a film together, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Joan was not nominated. She called up every other nominee and offered to accept the Oscar on their behalf, should they win, as a slight against Bette. Anne was on Broadway at the time and didn't attend the ceremony, and, as we know, she won. Joan's in all the traditional winner pictures posing with Anne's Oscar; and Anne didn't get it until later. 

What a wonderful year for nominated actresses, though. I've seen all of these performances... wait, have I seen Long Day's Journey into Night? I don't think I have. Well, it's Katharine Hepburn, so it was probably pretty great. I think I'd have voted for Anne, but any of them would have been a deserving winner. And it would have been cool to live in the timeline where Bette was a three-time Oscar winner. 

DID I LIKE THE MIRACLE WORKER? More than I remember liking it the first time around! Which feels like a very unenthusiastic way to answer that, but I did enjoy Anne Bancroft very much!

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Did you like The Miracle Worker? What are your thoughts on Anne Bancroft's Oscar win? 

Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.