{"id":469383,"date":"2026-02-15T03:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T03:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/469383\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T03:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T03:23:09","slug":"the-alternate-arguably-clunkier-title-that-nearly-replaced-simon-garfunkels-mrs-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/469383\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alternate, Arguably Clunkier Title That Nearly Replaced Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d by Simon & Garfunkel<\/a> is one of those rare, synergistic examples of music and film combining forces to lift one another. In the case of \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d, its cinematic counterpart was The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols. The film crew began working with the folk duo through Columbia Records, which brokered a deal with Embassy Pictures that would pay the musicians $25,000 to provide three new songs for the film starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.<\/p>\n

Paul Simon\u2019s first offerings to Nichols were \u201cPunky\u2019s Dilemma\u201d and \u201cOvers\u201d, which didn\u2019t win over the filmmaker nearly as much as the duo\u2019s hits like \u201cThe Sound of Silence\u201d<\/a> and \u201cScarborough Fair\u201d. So, Nichols, Simon, and Art Garfunkel continued to brainstorm music that felt authentic to the duo and would work in the movie.<\/p>\n

Paul Simon later said during an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show<\/a>, \u201cMike Nichols was almost finished with the film. What would happen is, in order to fill up a scene, we would take a piece of music and put it there, just to hear what the music would sound like.\u201d During the film\u2019s iconic wedding scene, Nichols told Simon he specifically wanted \u201cguitar music. So, I was just riffing, playing that opening lick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t working,\u201d Simon added. That\u2019s when he pulled the winning song, still half-finished, out of his back pocket.<\/p>\n

How Simon & Garfunkel Settled on the Name \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d<\/p>\n

Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s 1968 hit, \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d, is so synonymous with The Graduate that it\u2019s difficult to imagine the folk duo writing the song for anything but Mike Nichols\u2019 film from the same year. After all, Mrs. Robinson is the woman behind the memorable leg scene\u2014the wife of Dustin Hoffman\u2019s Benjamin Braddock\u2019s dad\u2019s law partner. With the character\u2019s name right there in the title, it would be easy to assume the song was tailor-made for the movie. But in reality, \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d was more of a placeholder than an actual reference to The Graduate.<\/p>\n

Art Garfunkel later described the stalemate meeting where Mike Nichols and the musicians struggled to reach a creative consensus, per Marc Eliot\u2019s Paul Simon: A Life<\/a>. \u201cPaul had been working on what is now \u2018Mrs. Robinson\u2019, but there was no name in it. We\u2019d just fill in with any three-syllable name. And because of the character in the picture, we just began using the name \u2018Mrs. Robinson\u2019 to fit. One day, we were sitting around with Mike talking about ideas for another song. I said, \u2018What about \u2018Mrs. Robinson\u2019?\u2019 Mike shot to his feet. \u2018You have a song called \u2018Mrs. Robinson\u2019, and you haven\u2019t even shown it to me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

To Simon\u2019s credit, the duo had reached no definitive conclusion that they would use \u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d as the song\u2019s titular character. In fact, Simon was previously singing \u201cMrs. Roosevelt\u201d before they decided to try out character names from the movie. Had The Graduate character had one more or one less syllable in her name, the song might not have become the iconic track that we know it as today.<\/p>\n

Photo by CBS Photo Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMrs. Robinson\u201d by Simon & Garfunkel is one of those rare, synergistic examples of music and film combining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,124111,216,17172,148990],"class_list":{"0":"post-469383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-folk-music","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-pop-music","12":"tag-simon-garfunkel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}