Broadway's lights will be dimmed tonight at 8 pm...

According to this article in Playbill:

Tony Award-winning actress Anne Bancroft, who played tough, warm and funny roles throughout a respected stage and screen career, died June 6 of uterine cancer at New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital, a spokesman for her husband, Mel Brooks, announced.

She was 73. Ms. Bancroft played Annie Sullivan in the Broadway and Hollywood takes on Helen Keller's story, The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson. She won a Best Actress Tony Award for the role in 1960. She won the Academy Award for the role on screen (as did stage and screen co-star Patty Duke, as Helen).

By the time of her Best Actress wins in New York and Hollywood, she already had a Tony on her shelf for her work in Two for the Seesaw. She would later be Tony nominated for the playing Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in Gibson's Golda in 1978.

One of her famous Hollywood roles was playing wealthy middle-aged seductress "Mrs. Robinson" in Mike Nichols' "The Graduate." She was Oscar nominated for the turn.

Broadway's marquees will be dimmed at 8 PM June 8 in tribute to Ms. Bancroft, Mel Brooks' spokesman, John Barlow, told Playbill.com.

Sadly, I never got to see Anne Bancroft live on stage, but one of my favorite film performances of hers (other than The Graduate of course) was in How To Make An American Quilt.

So here's to you, Anne Bancroft...

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