Seduced by Mrs. Robinson

August 14, 2017
Hollywood biographer Gray (Ron Howard) delivers a celebration of Mike Nichols’s seminal The Graduate in time for the film’s 50th anniversary. Unfortunately for a film so worthy of our admiration, Gray’s effort comes across as unnecessary. Split into three sections, her book begins with a history of the film’s production, continues with a retelling of its story, and ends with a discussion of its release and influence. The production history feels at once drawn-out and shallow, though it provides some insight into Dustin Hoffman’s feelings about his unlikely and unexpected elevation to leading man. The middle section is less close reading than unabashed rehash of the film’s plot. Appropriately for a book about how the film became “the touchstone of a generation,” the third section, on The Graduate’s afterlife, is the most effective. One begins to see on the page why this film has remained in America’s collective unconscious for half a century, but Gray falls short of adding to or reframing the film’s cultural cachet.

September 15, 2017

Inarguably one of the most influential films of the 1960s, The Graduate, which is based on the 1963 novella of the same name by Charles Webb, has a great backstory. Just in time for its 50th anniversary, this behind-the-scenes look at the modern classic by film historian and former story editor Gray (Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers; Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon...and Beyond) reveals an unlikely multicharacter marriage. A schlockmeister producer (Lawrence Turman), a young film director (Mike Nichols), a New York actor considered too short and homely to play a leading man (Dustin Hoffman), and an unsympathetic leading lady (Anne Bancroft) all combine to make movie history. Gray has plumbed film archives and interviews to reveal the story behind optioning the book, casting, and the intentions behind set and costume design. There is even scene-by-scene narration of the plot. Readers discover how this seemingly unprepossessing movie, adapted from a decidedly not best-selling novella, became one of the top-grossing films of its day, helping to articulate the frantic youth movement that defined 1960s culture and made stars of its actors. VERDICT Highly recommended for serious cineastes and fans. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]--Ellen Abrams, New York

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
A Hollywood industry insider unspools an absorbing, sometimes-uneven analysis of a film classic on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.At its best, Gray's (Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking, 2000) book is a well-researched and skillfully composed echo of such Hollywood tomes as Aljean Harmetz's Round Up the Usual Suspects. Only now does The Graduate (1967) reveal itself, in one sense, as a film that was out of place and time in its own era. As Gray points out, it is a movie that has always meant different things to different people, "a cinematic Rorschach test." Though it has its detractors, not least for a somewhat abrupt segue from social satire to romantic comedy, this seminal, deceptively sophisticated film has shown great staying power, and its innovative approach to collaboration, casting, and cinematic invention were, and remain, influential--as was its ambiguous climax, the significance of which Gray captures exceptionally well. She reveals a film viewed as an outsider's effort in more ways than one: outside a studio system whose demise it helped accelerate and outside the dominant American cultural milieu. The author, who leads screenwriting workshops at UCLA, has a practiced interpretive mind. She demonstrates how, for all its popularity and game-changing success, the toughest critics were split on the film's value and how many in the youth movement rebutted rather than embraced the movie's relevance. It is in these passages, and in offering an alternative, not-so-sympathetic take on the movie's protagonist, that Gray is most penetrating. But one wonders if a scene-by-scene synopsis and scrutiny is really necessary. Interesting in the main, it can get tedious. The author also engages in some questionable, rather high-blown assaying of the filmmakers' intents and weakens her remembrance of the '60s with a glib introduction. The book is not without flaws, but Gray effectively shows how The Graduate, despite ignoring the flashpoint issues of the day, worked as a subversive force in a period about to reassess its cinematic and cultural conventions.

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November 15, 2017
This tribute to Mike Nichols' landmark film The Graduate, released 50 years ago, falls comfortably between a Making of movie book and a memoir. Gray, who was once maverick director Roger Corman's story editor, brings both an insider's knowledge and a fan's enthusiasm to the project. The text is divided into three sections Making the Movie; The Screening Room, a mix of plot synopsis and critical interpretation; and After the Lights Came Up, a gathering of responses to the movie from critics at the time and fans over the years. The first section is the most successful, with Gray recounting some fascinating bits of backstory, including how Nichols explained to rising star Robert Redford why he wasn't right for the role of the bumbling Benjamin Braddock. Nichols made his point by asking Redford about the last time he had struck out with a woman. What do you mean? Redford replied. The attempts to explain the film's enduring popularity are less successful, too often belaboring the obvious, but overall there is plenty to enjoy in this fond remembrance of how we were all seduced by Mrs. Robinson.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)