No matter how many times I’ve written about or said to people that I did not turn down the lead in The Graduate, the question always comes up in interviews. “Why did you turn down the lead in The Graduate?”
I had read about twenty pages from the script for the director, Mike Nichols; the writer, Buck Henry; and the producer, Larry Turman; with an excellent actress reading the role of Mrs. Robinson. Mike called me that night to say, “You’re our number one choice. We don’t have a second choice.” He also said, “When I close my eyes and listen to you, you’re perfect, but when I look at you…” It was a typically gracious Mike way of saying, “Lose some weight.” It wasn’t that I was heavy, he just thought that being thinner would make me look younger. I was thirty-one. The character was supposed to be early twenties. He said they wanted to do a screen test, but only for “photographic purposes.”
In order to do a screen test you must first agree to the fee they will pay you, if they choose to hire you. They offered me $500 a week to star in The Graduate, plus a seven-year contract with modest increases, all with their option, of course. I was making more than that for a three-day guest spot on a television show, and I simply thought it was unfair. It really had nothing to do with the money, but the fairness.
This attitude, which first reared its head on the CBS Sunday morning shows, manifested again. Even though I have sometimes worked for scale in really low-budget movies, in this case I thought the salary was inappropriate, and I still feel that way. We went back and forth and finally agreed on a thousand dollars a week.
It seemed that within an hour my doorbell rang, and somebody delivered a large packet of pages from The Graduate that they wanted me to memorize before going in front of the cameras the next morning. That’s the kind of thing you deal with if you’re doing a soap opera, but to get to the level of acting they had seen me do in the office reading the script would be impossible. A note enclosed in the envelope read, “If you have any questions, call Mike Nichols,” and they gave me his home phone number.
Now I believe he might have subconsciously known something wrong was happening. I called him and said, “With this many pages to memorize overnight, I can’t be at the level I know you’d expect.” By then, I had studied acting for ten years and done a lot of theater and television. He again said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s only a photographic test,” and alluded to my need to lose weight to look younger. When I showed up on the set I had lost so much weight that Mike didn’t recognize me. However, it wasn’t only a “photographic test.”
I absolutely didn’t know the lines. I asked if I could improvise. The answer was no, and when Mike asked me if I would jump up and down on the bed and I asked why, it confirmed his feeling, a false one, that I would be difficult to deal with. I was not offered the role.I thought the whole thing was handled inappropriately. I’m sure that none of the people behind The Graduate realized that. I know Mike and Buck, and they’re really nice guys. Later, when I did work with Mike on Catch-22, he discovered what everyone learned when they worked with me: I wasn’t difficult to deal with.
One director who probably wouldn’t agree with that last statement is Joel Schumacher, who directed The Incredible Shrinking Woman, which I believe was his first picture. It was a movie filled with special effects, which by definition meant there would be more than your average mind-numbing hours of waiting around—like, eight. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who felt some thought could be given to how many hours the actors were waiting. I not only wasn’t the only one, but one actress actually felt it was being done deliberately to drive her crazy!
I went to Joel to ask if he could give some consideration to the actors’ call times. He looked at me as though I was nuts. He said, “You expect me to think about that!?” It was clear the special effects were more than enough of a challenge for him. I said, “I do expect you to think about that.” He told me that I was being paid more than Lily Tomlin, who played the Shrinking Woman. I said, “Really? Who’s her agent?” Then I said, “Under your logic the person being paid the most should wait the longest.” He said, “You’re like a Jewish prince.” Joel is Jewish, so I didn’t take it as an anti-Semitic remark, but I didn’t like it. Joel saw the look in my eye that surfaces from time to time and quickly added about himself, “And I’m white trash.”
Back to The Graduate. Turn it down? I may be a lot of things, but nuts really isn’t one of them. At the time, in spite of working in television, I owed $800 to the Actors Federal Credit Union. Believe me, I didn’t turn down The Graduate. To this day, I don’t think they realize they made it impossible for me to succeed. I say that not to point a finger but for directors in the future who may not realize what actors need to be at their best.
For example, when I’m involved in casting plays I write, instead of having the director, producer, casting director, and myself sit behind a long table, I give the person auditioning a table to sit behind as well, instead of just a straight-back chair. Sometimes I give them my table.
There’s a reason plays are in rehearsal for four weeks and then in previews before critics come. Movie scripts are often given to actors months ahead of time. As I’ve said, the only place actors are asked to memorize pages and pages of dialogue in a short period is on soap operas. I’ve done two soap operas and found it impossible to be anywhere near the level I can reach with the time given in movies and onstage. There are wonderful soap opera actors, but you don’t ever hear their names mentioned among our great actors. When they had opportunities with movies or theater they could really fulfill their potential.
I once asked a veteran soap opera actress if she enjoyed the work. She said, “The only thing I enjoy is the last line.”
I’ve always tried to focus on what I have and not on what I don’t have, because in the overall scheme of things, if I consider what I have been given it would be ridiculous for me to ever feel sorry for myself, and I never have.
I’ve known Mike Nichols for forty years, but since The Graduate test I’ve never had a bumpy moment with him. Whenever I see him, I can’t help but be aware I’m looking at someone very special—so original in his wit and so smart—probably in a class of his own, at least in show business. The two of us once had lunch, and the subject of The Graduate never came up. Oddly, I don’t even remember thinking about it when I was with him.
In 1997, thirty years after our awkward, failed encounter on The Graduate, Mike called to compliment me on something he’d seen on my cable show—a classy move. He’s a highly unusual dude. If our country ever becomes a monarchy, I could easily see him as king.
A friend of mine recently called my attention to Pictures at the Revolutionby Marc Harris (Penguin, 2008) in which The Graduate is discussed by Mike Nichols and Buck Henry:
Charles Grodin, a thirty-one-year-old TV and theater performer with a growing list of credits, impressed them both with a very sharp reading. “Grodin got very close,” says Nichols. “His reading was hilarious, he’s brilliantly talented, and he understood the jokes. But he didn’t look like Benjamin to me.”
“Chuck Grodin gave the best reading,” says Henry. “And maybe one of the best readings I’ve ever heard in my career, so funny and interesting. He thinks we offered him the part—I don’t think we did. I don’t remember his screen test, whereas Dustin’s was really memorable.”
Dustin Hoffman is a brilliant actor. We were in Lee Strasberg’s class together. I have no doubt he gave a memorable screen test. I also have no doubt he had the script well ahead of the night before he did the test.
Sometime in the early sixties, years before all of this, I saw Dustin standing on a street corner near where I lived. He said he was looking for me, because he was directing something in the basement of a church and he wanted me to be in it. There would be no pay, of course. I told him I couldn’t, because I had to work (driving a cab at that time). As I walked away, I looked back at him still standing on the corner. I remember thinking to myself, God, I wonder what’s going to happen to him? Obviously, he’s worked so hard and deeply deserves everything that’s happened to him. I think he’s a magnificent actor.
Mike Nichols wrote me a note after The Graduate screen test saying he’d like me to do Catch-22 with him. That helped, but what really kept The Graduate situation from getting to me was a telegram I received soon after the test from Renée Taylor, saying she wanted to meet with me. My friend now of over fifty years, Gene Wilder, got Renée and me together. Through Renée I met her friend Elaine May, which led me to doing The Heartbreak Kid, which really launched my movie career.