Trivia for
The Graduate (1967) More at IMDbPro »

• Robert Redford screen-tested with Candice Bergen for the part of Benjamin Braddock but was finally rejected by director Mike Nichols because Nichols did not believe Redford could persuasively project the underdog qualities necessary to the role. When he told this to Redford, the actor asked Nichols what he meant. "Well, let's put it this way," said Nichols, "Have you ever struck out with a girl?" "What do you mean?" asked Redford. "That's precisely my point," said Nichols.
  
  
• Lee Stanley screen tested for the role of Benjamin and was seriously considered for the part.
  
  
• Grayson Hall was considered for the role of Mrs. Robinson.
  
  
• Dustin Hoffman was already set to play a role in 'Mel Brooks (I)' The Producers (1968) when the opportunity to audition for "The Graduate" came up. Deferentially, Hoffman asked Brooks' permission to audition for the part in the other film. Through his wife, Anne Bancroft, (already cast) Brooks was familiar with the story of "The Graduate". He allowed Hoffman to audition, blithely confident he'd be found unsuitable for role of Mrs. Robinson's lover.
  
  
• Charles Grodin was cast as Benjamin, but the deal fell apart following a disagreement over salary. Mike Nichols still offered him a part in Catch-22 (1970), which he was already scheduled to direct.
  
  
• In Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft's first encounter in the hotel room, Bancroft did not know that Hoffman was going to grab her breast. Hoffman decided offscreen to do it, because it reminded him of schoolboys trying to nonchalantly grab girls' breasts in the hall by pretending to put their jackets on. When Hoffman did it onscreen, director Mike Nichols began laughing loudly offscreen. Hoffman began to laugh as well, so rather than stop the scene, he turned away from the camera and walked to the wall. Hoffman banged his head on the wall, trying to stop laughing, and Nichols thought it was so funny, he left it in.
  
  
• Although Mrs. Robinson is supposed to be much older than Benjamin, Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman are just under six years apart in age.
  
  
• The movie is full of womb imagery. From Benjamin's constant desire to stay immersed in his parent's swimming pool, to the slow close-up shot of the hips of Katherine's roommate as she brings the "Dear John" letter to Benjamin, to returning to the actual womb of the elder and maternal Mrs. Robinson.
  
  
• Some of the scenes of Benjamin in "Berkeley" were actually filmed at the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and USC (University of Southern California).
  
  
• When Elaine tracks down Ben in his gloomy room and he causes her to scream, a number of other tenants gather behind the landlord in the doorway. One says, "Shall I get the cops? I'll get the cops..." It's Richard Dreyfuss.
  
  
• In the famous promotional still for this film, Dustin Hoffman is seen in the background framed by Mrs. Robinson's shapely leg. The leg in that photo didn't belong to Anne Bancroft, however; it belonged to a then-unknown model, Linda Gray.
  
  
• Mike Nichols initially wanted French actress Jeanne Moreau to play Mrs. Robinson. The idea behind this was that in the French culture, the "older" women tended to "train" the younger men in sexual matters. The producers for the movie, Joseph E. Levine and Lawrence Turman, were completely opposed to the idea. Mike Nichols was even more set on having Simon and Garfunkel do the integrated soundtrack for the film. Nichols agreed to switch actresses for Mrs. Robinson as long as he could still use Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.
  
  
• Mike Nichols approached Ava Gardner for the role of Mrs. Robinson.
  
  
• Mike Nichols cast Eddra Gale (the woman on the bus) as a tribute to Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), in which she plays the role La Saraghina.
  
  
• The movie's line "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" was voted as the #63 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
  
  
• In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #17 Greatest Movie of All Time.
  
  
• The movie's line "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?" was voted as the #5 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
  
  
• When Benjamin is shown banging on the church window with his arms raised and extended, many reviewers felt he was portrayed as a Christ-like image. In actuality, this was a compromise with the minister of the church. The minister had threatened to throw everyone out when the scene was rehearsed with Benjamin pounding his fists on the fragile window, which had been a gift to the church.
  
  
• Sources vary on precisely what the truth is about the possibility of Doris Day playing Mrs. Robinson. One rumor says the property was acquired with her in mind as Mrs. Robinson, and producer Lawrence Turman sent the novel to her manager/husband, Martin Melcher, wanting to know their opinion of Day in the role, but Melcher was so disgusted by the thought that he refused to even mention it to her. Doris Day wrote in her 1975 memoir, which is probably more accurate, that she was actually offered the role, but "I could not see myself rolling around in the sheets with a young man half my age whom I'd seduced".
  
  
• Judy Garland was considered for the role of Mrs. Robinson
  
  
• Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft were the not quickly chosen for the leads of this film. Warren Beatty was originally going to be the lead, but after he did not get the role, Robert Redford was selected. Patricia Neal was considered, but reportedly declined because she was uneasy about playing a lead role so soon after having a stroke.
  
  
• On "Inside the Actors Studio" (1994), director Mike Nichols claims that the final "sobering" emotion that Benjamin and Elaine go through was due to the fact that he had just been shouting at the two of them to laugh in the scene. The actors were so scared that after laughing they stopped, scared. Nichols liked it so much, he kept it.
  
  
• Linda Gray, the then-unknown actress whose legs appear in the promotional poster for the movie, Mrs. Robinson, has played the title role in the musical stage version by the same name on the London stage.
  
  
• The model frogman in the aquarium is toppled over when Mrs. Robinson tosses in the keys.
  
  
• Two interesting camera techniques are used in the film. In the scene where Benjamin is running, he is shown at some distance running straight at the camera, an effect which makes him look as if he getting nowhere as he's running. (This technique is accomplished with a very long telephoto lens, which foreshortens distances in relation to the camera.) In another scene, Benjamin is walking from the right side of the screen to the left, while everyone else in the scene is moving from left to right. In western culture, things that move left to right seem natural (think of the direction you read words on a page), those that move right to left seem to be going the wrong way. These two visual techniques echo the themes of the film, Benjamin is going the wrong way, and getting nowhere in life.
  
  
• Burt Ward had to turn down the role of Benjamin Braddock due to his commitment to "Batman" (1966) and the studio (20th Century Fox) wouldn't lend him.
  
  
• According to Dustin Hoffman at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduation 2003, his friend and former roommate Gene Hackman was cast as Mr. Robinson but was fired after a few weeks of work.
  
  
• Patty Duke was offered the part of Elaine Robinson, but turned it down because she did not want to work at the time.
  
  
• None of the older characters has their first name identified in the film; only the younger characters of Benjamin, Elaine and Carl do, increasing the sense of a generation gap.
  
  
• The name plate on the hotel desk reads "Mr. Kranze". Don Kranze was the film's assistant director.
  
  
• Ronald Reagan was considered for the role of Mr. Braddock.
  
  
• Paul Simon wrote two songs for the film that director Mike Nichols rejected: "Punky's Dilemma" and "A Hazy Shade of Winter". Both appear on the Simon and Garfunkel "Bookends" album. The song "Mrs. Robinson" was not written for the movie; it was the working title of a song Simon was then writing (originally called "Mrs. Roosvelt", and about Eleanor Roosevelt) and Nichols decided to include it. Simon and Garfunkel only sing the chorus but none of the verses of the later hit song. Additionally, the chorus portion sung contains some lyrics not featured in the more popular "final" version of the song.
  
  
• Apparently, Dustin Hoffman's screen test consisted of him fumbling his lines and awkwardly trying to grab Katharine Ross's behind, which angered her. As he left thinking he didn't get the role, his awkwardness was just what director Mike Nichols needed for Benjamin Braddock.
  
  
• Within a year of the movie's release, plastic manufacturing companies became enormously successful. Many people attribute this to Walter Brooke's quote about "plastics". Brooke himself once told his nephew that he would have invested in plastics, if he had known that the remark would lead to such success.
  
  
• Jack Nicholson was considered for the part of Benjamin Braddock.
  
  
• Sally Field tested the role of Elaine.
  
  
• The movie's line "Plastics." was voted as the #42 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
  
  
• Anne Bancroft was only a little more than eight years older than her on-screen daughter Katharine Ross.
  
  
• The red, Italian sports car which Benjamin drives throughout the movie is a 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 also known as the Duetto.
  
  
• According to Susan Hayward's biographers, Mike Nichols originally wanted her for the role of Mrs Robinson but she declined because she wanted to avoid modifying her screen image. After Doris Day and Patricia Neal also turned it down Nichols eventually offered it to Anne Bancroft.
  
  
• When Dustin Hoffman showed up at Joseph E. Levine's office for a casting interview, the producer mistook him for a window cleaner, so Hoffman, in character, cleaned a window.
  
  
• Mike Farrell's movie debut.
  
  
• When 'The Graduate' was first released in Portugal, the ending was cut; the movie ended with a helpless Ben behind the glass of the church watching Elaine getting married. The reason why the film suffered such a major cut was that the dictatorship Portugal lived in those days had a solid basis in Catholic Church and family values, and the censorship was given orders not to let any bad example pass to the youth. So it was decided that the movie should end with the lesson that nothing ever should oppose the church, the state and the parents.
  
  
• Dustin Hoffman was so boyish looking at age 30 that he played a generation younger than Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967), even though she is only six years older than him.
  
  
• William Daniels, who plays Benjamin's father, is actually only ten years older than Dustin Hoffman.
  
  
• Marion Lorne's final feature film.
  
  

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