More
than six months after the film that inspired it premiered, “Mrs. Robinson” reached Number 1 on the
Billboard pop chart in June 1968, where it stayed for three weeks. The single
by Simon and Garfunkel expanded—and,
in many ways, fundamentally recast—the lyrics used in a shorter version in Mike
Nichols’ The Graduate. Starting
as a fragmentary salute to a former First Lady, it had undergone a
metamorphosis into a wistful reflection on the loss of American values and role
models.
According
to Peter Ames Carlin’s 2016 biography of Simon, Homeward Bound, Nichols had seen
Simon and Garfunkel’s last LP, Parsley
Sage Rosemary and Thyme, as reflective of the same sort of malaise
afflicting the emotionally confused protagonist of his film. Nichols’ pitch to
the duo had an additional element that must have surely appealed to their
ambition: creating a score that, unusually for this period, would be rock ‘n’
roll based.
But
Paul Simon did not have an easy time of it. Not only was he mired in a bad case of
writer’s block, but he also had to deal initially with rejection. After turning
down “Punky’s Dilemma” and “Overs,” Nichols asked Simon what else he had. The
songwriter, perhaps feeling slightly chagrined over Nichols' coolness toward his initial original efforts, said he just
had a few chords, nothing else.
It
was Art Garfunkel who later divulged to the director that there was at least
somewhat more. It had a catchy “de-de-de-de-de” section, and even an opening
line: “Here’s to you, Mrs. Roosevelt.”
Nichols,
initially struck by the surname so similar to the seductress in his film, urged
the duo to develop what they had quickly so he could sneak it into the movie,
now in its late production stage. It would be the final piece in a soundtrack
that, without being plot-specific, fit the sense of malaise and alienation
besetting title character Benjamin Braddock: “Scarborough Fair,” “April, Come
She Will” and “The Sound of Silence.”
While
able to complete the music for the song, Simon could only manage to finish one
verse, a shortfall that Nichols bridged by having the duo sing that de-de-de-de-de as the connective tissue
across several scenes toward the end. That sparse version appeared in the film
and the bestselling soundtrack that capitalized on it, but Simon was not
through with it.
The
lines that Simon came up with, for the duo’s LP Bookends, while striking,
are also something of a satiric collage, reflecting his working method. He
tended to obsess over songs, tinkering with words and chord changes, before
returning to his notebook to pull out a line here or there that he could slip
in somewhere.
The
version of “Mrs. Robinson” that appeared as a single and on Bookends feels less like a direct
commentary on the character than a speculation on her life, before and after
the events of the film.
“We’d
like to know a little bit about you for our files” is the kind of seemingly
innocent statement that the administrators of a mental health or
substance-abuse facility might make to a new entrant. “We’d like to help you
learn to help yourself,” continuing in the same vein, sounds even more
sinister, a way to anesthetize the pain of the bored, cynical woman with little
interesting to think of besides revenging herself on her husband with his
business partner’s son. Alcohol abuse and a loveless marriage have combined to
bring her to a bad pass—most likely after Ben and daughter Elaine have
contrived to run away,
Thus,
“going to the candidates’ debate” had nothing to do with any plot point in the
film. Mrs. Robinson doesn’t evince the slightest interest even in voting, let
alone listening to politicians hash over issues.
So,
why this reference? It might be a leftover from the inspiration for the song,
Mrs. Roosevelt, who sat through all kinds of debates during her life. But 1968
was an election year, and a few months after the release of Bookends occurred a very important
debate between Democratic Presidential candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F.
Kennedy, which would play a pivotal role in the California primary.
In
what way can “Mrs. Robinson” be thought of as the theme for The Graduate? Leave aside the title and
it becomes trickier. The closest the song comes in the second verse, referring
to a period before Benjamin may even be born: “Hide it in a hiding place where
no one ever goes/Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes.”
What
is being hidden could be a liquor bottle, or what The Rolling Stones called
“Mother’s Little Helper”: a pill to calm her down when she gets to feel “What a
drag it is getting old.”
Mrs.
Robinson has more than a few reasons to feel this way. As a result of an
affair, she became pregnant, then was forced to leave college and enter a
loveless marriage. It is not merely “a little secret, just a Robinson affair,”
but a relationship leaving vast wreckage, big enough so she feels the need to
“hide it from the kids.”
In
a year marked by social cleavage among Americans, it was not surprising that
even the sports world was affected. The most significant sign of this was the
greater division within sports itself, with Muhammad Ali, for instance,
exciting controversy with his defiance of the draft because he had “no quarrel
with them Viet Cong.”
Through
his father, Paul Simon had been raised as a diehard Yankee fan and especially
franchise cornerstone Joe DiMaggio.
By the time he came to write “Mrs. Robinson,” however, the cultural landscape
that had once cheered the 56-game hitting streak of “The Yankee Clipper” as a
momentary release from a world engulfed by war had changed utterly.
Casting
about for a hero in a simpler time, Simon thought of childhood idol Joe
DiMaggio. The reference that incorporated this—“Where have you gone, Joe
DiMaggio?”—attracted an unusual amount of attention, perhaps surpassed only by
Jimmy Webb’s startling image in “MacArthur Park”: “Someone left the cake out in
the rain.”
Actually,
only one person was really discombobulated
by Simon’s lyric: DiMaggio himself. “‘Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?’” the
slugger remarked plaintively to friends, quoting the song’s line before
remarking, in a tone as puzzled as it was annoyed: “But I never went away.”
But
many other listeners knew instinctively what Simon meant because of the line
that immediately followed: “A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” An earlier
verse had asked Mrs. Robinson to contemplate the “sympathetic eyes” all around
her.
Intentionally
or not, with that subtle change of an adjective, Simon had captured the sense
that America was now losing traction. The mood by the late Sixties had shifted
under the pressure of events—violence, changing sexual mores, and the campus
unrest that leads Ben to be briefly but ludicrously suspected of radicalism. By
this time, Americans felt that time is out of joint, with the middle-aged
wondering what had ever happened to their hope of happiness and the young
feeling confused about a future whose promise consists of a single word:
“plastics.”
Some
time after the song’s release, Simon and DiMaggio ran into each other in a
restaurant, and the aging Hall of Famer finally got to vent about his
consternation about the reference to himself. Simon responded, “I don't mean it
that way...I meant, where are these great heroes now?” Hearing this, DiMaggio “was
flattered once he understood that it was meant to be flattering," Simon
recalled years later.
The
baseball legend must have been very flattered indeed. In 1999, to honor this
player so used to obeisance that he would only be introduced last at Old Timers
Day as “the greatest living Yankee,” the organization prevailed on Simon to
play “Mrs. Robinson” as part of a tribute on “Joe DiMaggio Day,” the last time
the ailing hero would hear the roar of the crowd.
Passing through Depot Square Park in my hometown of
Englewood NJ, I saw, out in the humid noonday air, about 100 people
carrying signs and listening to a set of speakers. One was introduced as the pastor of a local
church. I was a bit surprised, as ministers in the past have tended to appear
in the park on Sunday rather than Saturday. 
