The Graduate: Rare Facts About An Era-Defining Film

By | January 11, 2019

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Dustin Hoffman. Source: (cinemabeats.wordpress.com)

Released in 1967, The Graduate launched Dustin Hoffman's career -- but do you know your Graduate trivia? The movie has been endlessly analyzed as a document of the shifting political, social, and above all, sexual, standards of the era. It's identified with the so-called generation gap, wrestles with the issue of disappointing your parents, and carries a whiff of the sexual openness that emerged that same year in the Summer of Love. Just about every college graduate at the time had a little bit of Benjamin Braddock in them.

But The Graduate might have been a very different film -- the Simon & Garfunkel theme song we all know so well almost didn't happen, and Dustin Hoffman almost didn't get the part. The poster image isn't what you thought it was, and Anne Bancroft is nowhere near as scandalous a lover for Hoffman as we're led to think. Read on for rare facts and unusual stories about The Graduate.

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross and a Bunch of No-Names

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Anne Bancroft And Dustin Hoffman In 'The Graduate' Anne Bancroft pulling on stockings in front of Dustin Hoffman in a scene from the film 'The Graduate', 1967. Source: (Photo by Embassy Pictures/Getty Images)

Interestingly, only Benjamin Braddock and his friends are known to have first names in the film. Every adult in The Graduate is addressed as Mr. or Mrs. Even after Benjamin slept with Mrs. Robinson, he never addressed her by her first name. This is said to have been a clear sign of the generation gap that was so prevalent at the time.