Re-watched The Graduate last night

& I have to say, Mrs. Robinson was smoking hot. Hotter than Katherine Ross.

According to IMDB, Anne Bancroft was born in 1931, & that movie came out in 1967, so she was 35-36 when it was filmed. Seems like nowadays many women are having their first children at that age, not marrying off their undergrad-at-berkeley daughters. I'd always thought of Mrs. Robinson as late-40s-ish before.

Otherwise, i was surprised at how little actually HAPPENS in the movie. Lots of driving & sitting around.

I forget the age difference, but Ann Bancroft was just a little bit older than Dusty.

Yeah...that movie's probably responsible for more older-women fantasies than any other (even In Search of MIL*s, Volume 17).

But Katherine Ross, though...phew...and still a fine looking woman now.

Mrs. Robinson told Benjamin that after sex at some point - somthing about her being conceived in the back of a Ford...

No wonder fertility clinics are booming! Female fertility starts to decline at 28.

She's, what, around 40 (plus or minus) in the movie and she's spent her entire adult life trapped in a loveless marriage that she didn't want to be in in the first place.

And people say those were the good old days....

that in films. And Dustin himself was actually about 30...too old for the average college student.

Similar to Angela Lansbury and Lawrence Harvey in "The Manchurian Candidate"--he was only 3-4 years younger than her, but she convincingly played his mother.

I still think "The Graduate" is awfully smug, facile, and very overrated, but I wasn't a baby boomer, so maybe I didn't have the visceral reaction lots of people coming of age in the 60's who saw it did.

I do, however, think it's damn shame that when Anne Bancroft died, most of the obituaries dwelled on Mrs. Robinson (complete with snapshots of her smoking in the leopard-skin coat), and not her Oscar-winning turn in "The Miracle Worker." Bancroft also complained about this later in life; all I can figure is, a lot of current-day news editors and film who saw the film in their formative years saw her as one of their first sexual fantasies, and never quite recovered.

but I read the book, and thought it strange and stupid. I wonder if the whole big appeal of the movie is just some male fantasy of being seduced by an attractive woman. Hey wow, it must have something deep and important to say.

anne bancroft looks more, ummm, carnal to me.

ross is very all-american. still, she's right purty.

Anyone else? :shrug:

She had to have been at least 42. Either that or she aged incredibly badly. (She is beautiful in the movie, but she's no 35.)

The movie was released in '67 which means it was probably filmed in '66 which would have made her 35 at the time it was filmed.