The Miracle Worker ***** (1962, Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson) – Classic Movie Review 3509

Securing the role against studio choices Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman or Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Bancroft re-creates her Tony-winning Broadway stage performance as the devoted but determined Boston teacher Annie Sullivan, who tutors and cares for deaf, mute and blind girl Helen Keller, after the girl’s desperate parents (Victor Jory, Inga Swenson) seek her help to keep their daughter out of an institution. Annie must somehow break through to Helen to get her to communicate.

Bancroft’s marvellous movie performance is a miracle, winning her the Best Actress Oscar (against favourite Bette Davis for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) and Bafta for Best Foreign Actress. And she is matched all the way by young Patty Duke, who won the Best Supporting Actress statuette, beating out the favourite, Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird. She also won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.

This is a first-rate film of the highest quality, loving directed as an obvious labour of love by Arthur Penn (who also directed the play version of it on Broadway) in a work of rare craftsmanship, and telling the true story in a heart-rending way. There is a beautiful, moving, literate screenplay by William Gibson, who also wrote the stage play, though Keller had told her story in a memoir, The Story of My Life, and there was an American TV play version of the story in 1957.

United Artists did not want Duke to re-create her Broadway stage performance as, at 16, she was far too mature to play a six-year-old on film, but they relented when Bancroft was cast. Beah Richards (as Viney, the Keller Maid) and Kathleen Comegys (as Aunt Ev) were also in the original stage production. Andrew Prine plays James Keller.

When Bancroft’s work in another Broadway play prevented her from going to accept her Oscar, it gave Baby Jane co-star Joan Crawford her chance to avenge herself on her Oscar-nominated arch-rival Bette Davis by appearing on stage at the Academy Awards to accept it on her behalf.

The Miracle Worker was remade for TV in 1979, with Patty Duke taking the Anne Bancroft teacher role and Melissa Gilbert excellent as the deaf and blind girl Helen Keller.

Patty Duke died on 29 March 2016, aged 69. She was the mother of Sean Astin. She had a long and successful career, winning three Emmys and the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical for Me, Natalie (1969).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3509

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/