The Graduate at 50: why Mrs Robinson almost failed to seduce Hollywood
Ayoung man comes home to Beverly Hills for the summer after his graduation, is seduced by one of his parents’ married friends, then falls in love with her daughter. This was the précis for a comedy-drama that every Hollywood studio rejected in the mid-Sixties.
It was based on a 1963 novella called The Graduate, written by 22 year-old Charles Webb, which had received some minor critical acclaim without ever being mistaken for the next Catcher in the Rye. Budding producer Larry Turman snapped up the film rights for $1,000 (£785), then spent several years trying and failing to piece the project together – even after he’d found a director, Mike Nichols, fresh from a Broadway triumph (with Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park) and looking to make his mark in film.
For a while, it was touch and go whether The Graduate, now celebrating its half-century, would even get made. Certainly no one had...
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