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Eric D. Snider<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Mental_Floss<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>present 12 Seductive Facts About The Graduate<\/em><\/a><\/b>.\u00a0<\/strong>Here are three of my favorites<\/span>…<\/p>\n The obvious choice for the role of Benjamin Braddock\u2014a privileged Beverly Hills kid with wealthy parents\u2014was someone tan, handsome, white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Robert Redford was everyone\u2019s first choice, but Nichols vetoed him on the grounds that the audience wouldn\u2019t believe him as a character who has been rejected by women. Nichols auditioned hundreds of actors for the part. After seeing Hoffman\u2019s audition, Nichols realized the key to the character should be that he\u2019s out of place. He\u2019s surrounded by tall, beautiful blond people, but he\u2019s none of those things. Hoffman thought his audition had been terrible, but Nichols hired him, against the advice of the producers and financiers.<\/p>\n Burt Ward, then becoming very famous as the Caped Crusader\u2019s sidekick in TV\u2019s Batman<\/em>, was offered the lead role by producer Turman. But Ward\u2019s bosses nixed it. Ward said, \u201cBecause\u00a0Batman<\/em> was so enormous and successful … they didn\u2019t want to dilute anything to do with the character by having me play a different role. The studio wouldn\u2019t let me do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides Redford and Ward, many other actors were considered for Benjamin, including Charles Grodin, who came very close to being cast before dropping out over money and scheduling.\u00a0Elaine, eventually played by Katharine Ross, was supposed to be Candice Bergen, with Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret, and Jane Fonda on the wish list, too. Nichols\u2019 top choice for Benjamin\u2019s father (William Daniels) was Ronald Reagan, who was just then going into politics. Doris Day turned down Mrs. Robinson because the book was too dirty (according to one telling, her husband-slash-manager didn\u2019t even show it to her). And when Nicholsvisited Ava Gardner, who\u2019d expressed interest in playing Mrs. Robinson, she acted like a nutty movie star. She declared, unasked, that she wouldn\u2019t take off her clothes, and said she\u2019d been trying all day to place a phone call to Ernest Hemingway, who really was a friend of hers but who\u2019d been dead for five years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric D. Snider\u00a0and\u00a0Mental_Floss\u00a0present 12 Seductive Facts About The Graduate.\u00a0Here are three of my favorites… 7. NOBODY, INCLUDING DUSTIN HOFFMAN, THOUGHT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14088"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14090,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088\/revisions\/14090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
7. NOBODY, INCLUDING DUSTIN HOFFMAN, THOUGHT DUSTIN HOFFMAN SHOULD STAR IN IT.<\/span><\/h4>\n
11. IT COULD HAVE STARRED THE BOY WONDER!<\/span><\/h4>\n
12. IT COULD HAVE STARRED ABOUT A MILLION OTHER PEOPLE, TOO.<\/span><\/h4>\n