Anne Bancroft by Douglass K. Daniel

Author:Douglass K. Daniel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2017-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

10

Motherhood and More Roles to Follow

Ideas for stories could come from anywhere and at any time. Sumner Arthur Long was trying to make a career as a writer in Hollywood when he was walking along the street and a woman caught his eye. She was in her fifties, very pregnant, and beaming. He thought to himself, “I wonder what her husband said when …” Some years later, in 1962, Long finished that thought with the play Never Too Late, a comedy about a middle-aged woman who discovers to her delight—and her husband’s shock—that she is going to have a baby. A Broadway hit, Never Too Late played on the notion that a baby late in life could bring with it uncertainty, humor, and love.

Surprise, at least to some extent, accompanied the diagnosis that Anne, age forty, would be having a baby in spring 1972. “She never thought she would get pregnant,” her longtime friend David Lunney remembered. “It was like a cartoon thing—she came home from the doctor and said, ‘Guess what, honey?’ And he said, ‘What?’ ‘I’m pregnant.’ And she had Max.”

There was more to it, of course. The prospect of giving birth at her age carried a degree of risk. As a woman passes her mid-thirties, the chances increase for miscarriage, birth defects, and genetic disorders. Anne listened to the warnings—and the predictions that this could be her last chance to give birth. She decided to forgo the increase in risk of miscarriage that came with amniocentesis, the medical test that would show whether the baby carried any abnormalities in its chromosomes that would lead to birth defects. She was determined to have her child.

And she did. On May 22, 1972, a healthy boy, Maximillian Michael, was born to Anne and Mel in New York City. “She was thrilled to death to have Max,” said a close friend, Bobbi Elliott. “My God, that was the highlight of her life.” Elliott and her husband, the musical director Jack Elliott, were raising three children, one of them a daughter just a few years older than Max. Even before Max’s birth, Bobbi Elliott and Anne talked about the challenges facing a mother. Anne was naturally curious and worked diligently at anything she cared about, traits that helped her as an actress, and she wanted to know everything when it came to raising a child.

“She was very fearful. She was very worried that she wouldn’t be the most perfect mother in the world,” Bobbi Elliott said. “She was always worried about that, as she was terribly worried that she wouldn’t be the perfect person onstage. People in show business … they’re terribly insecure. And that was one of the most endearing qualities about her.”

During her pregnancy and for the first year after her son’s birth, Anne shifted her focus away from her acting career. She had no interest in committing herself to the late hours and potentially long run that a play would demand, and she declined to be cast in films for the time being.

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