Did anybody read the Charles Webb ‘61 article from two days ago? If so, how could you resist commenting on this part.

Although - to his considerable regret - Webb was never seduced by an older woman, Benjamin in The Graduate was pretty much a self-portrait: same background, same gaucheness, same disillusion with parental values.

…

Over the decades, Webb has become used to hearing people speculate - often authoritatively - about whom Mrs Robinson was based on.

In fact, she had a pretty hazy genesis. Although Webb’s own mother-in-law might seem the obvious candidate, she couldn’t stand him, regarding him as a quite unsuitable partner for her daughter.

However, there was one occasion when he passed the open door of her bathroom and saw her naked, stepping out of the shower. Webb insists that he wasn’t in the least aroused, but suspects the incident may have flicked a switch somewhere inside him.

Her name, meanwhile, came from a classmate in college whom Webb hardly knew. In adulthood, he met up with the classmate again, and learnt that the boy’s mother had been going around for years proudly claiming - with some justification - to be the real Mrs Robinson.

Mrs. Robinson was an Eph Mom! (I do not think that she is the commentator who goes by “ephmom” in these parts.) Perfect. And the “self-portrait” description means we can conclude that Benjamin Braddock (the Dustin Hoffman character) attended Williams. Too bad we could never confirm that he wears a Williams tie in the opening montage.

An update on Charles Webb ‘61, author of The Graduate. (Hat tip Newmark’s Door.)

It has taken Charles Webb 40 years to write a sequel to ‘The Graduate’. He made no money from the film, has sunk into the deepest poverty and now lives in a hotel in Eastbourne. ‘I wouldn’t have had it any other way,’ he tells John Preston

Sometime in the mid-1970s, several years after he wrote The Graduate and gave away all his possessions, Charles Webb was working as a clerk in a branch of Kmart.

One day he noticed that there was a new product on the shelves, designed to help children become potty-trained.

It was called The Graduate.

‘I think that’s when I realised this thing was never going to waft away into the distance.

“Although the film wasn’t my hit, my whole life has been measured by it.

“I’ve no idea how life would have turned out had it not been for this phenomenon, but everything would have been very different. That’s for sure.’

Read the whole thing.

Is this claim from Wikipedia correct?

Benjamin Braddock, the main character of the The Graduate, is widely believed to have attended Williams College. In the opening sequence of the movie, Dustin Hoffman playing Benjamin Braddock, is wearing a Williams College tie.

Most agree that Braddock attended Williams. The author of the book on which the movie was based was Charles Webb ‘61. The book begins “Benjamin Braddock graduated from a small Eastern college on a day in June.” The number of small Eastern colleges with June graduations is not large.

But is Hoffman wearing a Williams tie in the movie? I don’t remember that. If so, we need a picture! Or, better, a video. Please help us, loyal readers.

Geoff Hutchinson ‘99 notes that:

In the 1967 movie, The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman receives the one-word advice “Plastics.” If Hollywood were to remake the movie right now, chances are that one word would be the hot buzzword “Nano” as in “nanotechnology” or “nanoscience.”

All good Ephs know that Charles Webb ‘61 is the author of the book that the movie was based on. We also like to believe that Dustin Hoffman’s character went to Williams, although that is never stated (nor contradicted) in the movie.

Yet, for me, the 2005 version of “plastics” is definitely “statistics.” Learn statistics, young Ephs. Doing so will serve you well in more careers than any other single topic taught at Williams today.