Apr. 9, 1963 - “I’m so excited — I can’t believe it!” Anne Bancroft exclaimed last night. With no advance knowledge that she was being tagged the best screen actress of 1962, she got the news of her Oscar last night from television. Immediately after last night’s performance of “Mother Courage,” in which she is starring at the Martin Beck Theatre, she hurried to her duplex at 260 W. 11th St. to watch the telecast from Santa Monica, Calif. With her was her boyfriend, Mel Brooks — the chief comedy writer for Sid Caesar — and her press agent, Lillian Pickard. She was sipping a drink when Joan Crawford stepped to the stage in California to accept the award on her behalf. “Good gosh,” said Miss Bancroft, “Joan looks like me on television.” Then she phoned her mother, Mrs. Mildred Italiano, and her two sisters. “I didn’t think I would win,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I just didn’t. I tried not to think about who would win, and I didn’t go to see any of the other pictures — but I will now.” Recalling her six unrewarding years in Hollywood in the 1950s, during which she made 15 second-rate films before giving up and returning to New York, she observed, “Actually, ‘Miracle Worker’ gave me the only real role I’ve had in the movies.”
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