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Sun 4 October 2026 3:00, UK
While some listeners are perhaps more fickle and restless than others, preferring to constantly be on the hunt for new artists to pique their interest, it’s also perfectly natural to develop an obsession or an infatuation with an artist. At a time when swathes of fans were swept up in Beatlemania, emergent folk duo Simon and Garfunkel appeared to be quietly accruing an equally impressive fanbase.
It may have taken the pair a considerable amount more time to embed themselves in the public’s consciousness, but after a string of hits such as ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘Homeward Bound’ across their first couple of albums, it became apparent to audiences that their songs possessed something special. The mop-topped Scousers had done their best to conquer the charts, but this tender twosome presented an entrancing alternative, and there were plenty of listeners who considered what they were doing to be right at the cutting edge.
Among the fans was director Mike Nichols, who supposedly found himself spending weeks on end listening to the duo during the production of his 1967 film, The Graduate. Given that he couldn’t bring himself to lift the needle off their records, he sought out a meeting with the chief executive of Columbia Records, Clive Davis, to see if he could secure the services of his new favourite act to provide a soundtrack for the film.
While Davis immediately had dollar signs replacing his eyeballs, Paul Simon was considerably less enthusiastic about writing a full soundtrack. Unsure about how he’d manage to do something of this nature without having to bow down to someone else’s demands and directions, as well as maintaining a level of concern about selling out during a pivotal moment in their career, he initially declined to write a full soundtrack, but after some persuasion and a moderate financial arrangement, he agreed to conjure up a handful of original songs for their consideration.
$25,000 and a cursory read-through of the script were all it ended up taking to convince Simon to agree to the task, and he returned a few weeks later with two songs called ‘Punky’s Dilemma’ and ‘Overs’, thinking that this would be enough to honour his end of the bargain. However, Nichols didn’t seem to think that either of these songs was satisfactory or suitable for the movie, and while Simon could have retreated to the drawing board, he seemingly had one more option up his sleeve.
While ‘Mrs Roosevelt’ was unfinished at the time, still using placeholder lyrics and decidedly uncertain on whether it would even be about former Flotus Eleanor Roosevelt, Simon opted to return to Nichols with this work in progress, hoping that this would end up being more to his liking, who felt felt it was perfect, and even the non-verbal parts seemed to appeal to him, which became part of the iconic introduction to the song.
Of course, ‘Mrs Roosevelt’ became ‘Mrs Robinson’ by the end, and Art Garfunkel recalled in the 2010 biography, Paul Simon: A Life, that making this simple alteration was enough to convince Nichols to give them the green light.
Further reading: From The Vault
“There was no name in it, and we’d just fill in with any three-syllable name,” he explained, “because of the character in the picture. We just began using the name ‘Mrs Robinson’ to fit. One day, we were sitting around with Mike talking about ideas for another song. And I said, ‘What about ‘Mrs Robinson’, and Mike shot to his feet. ‘You have a song called ‘Mrs Robinson’, and you haven’t even shown it to me?’ So we explained the working title and sang it for him.”
They may well have been sceptical about it, but it proved to be one of the most iconic songs of the entire decade, arguably helping to define the 1960s folk rock movement, as well as becoming one of the greatest original songs from a film soundtrack and one of the finest songs that Simon has ever written in a rather illustrious career.
