Buried Treasure or Bargain Bin Letdown? Lou Waxman on The Graduate Soundtrack

April 22, 2026

Lou rescued a copy of the soundtrack to The Graduate from the two-dollar bin. This album was rough. The album cover was beat and there was an actual dried out earthworm stuck to the back cover. The wax was dusty and full of marks. Going into listening to this record, Lou had some preconceived ideas that this was grittier than it turned out to be. Lou was prepared to argue that the soundtrack was one of the earliest ones to feature 1960s rock songs in its entirety. A precursor to the Easy Ridersoundtrack in 1969. In fact, the soundtrack to The Graduate is pretty much easy listening. Here, Simon and Garfunkel are far on the folk spectrum in folk rock and only contribute five songs. Simon had yet to complete “Mrs. Robinson” at the time so that track is merely a draft version of sorts. A snippet of a song, not fully realized. David Grusin, an illustrious composer for films for decades, contributes several instrumentals that fill out the album. In short, this soundtrack kinda sucks. Maybe that is why it looks like this copy was buried underneath John Wayne Gacy’s crawlspace. No bueno.

In fact, Lou is beginning to get the feeling that The Graduate is much more of a company man in terms of the film industry than he might have been led to believe. The film always getsreferenced as one of the key films that ushered in New Hollywood in 1967. Lou is a Bonnie and Clyde stan. That is really the movie that changed everything. Just ask Pauline Kael. But to be clear Mark Harris wrote the definitive book on this pivot point from the studio system to the Young Turks, Pictures at a Revolution, which is one of the finest books ever written on the movies.

Lou knows that most people out there do not read full books anymore, which is fine since Lou cannot watch a full movie or TV show. For those who hate to read, here is a book report on Pictures in verse:

Doctor Doolittle

Doolittle was

Heavily doctored

That pink snail

Sure was awkward

Musicals played

The same old song

And the studios

Played along

Yet with

“The Sound of Silence”

And a rush of violence

Old Hollywood seemed

Dead and gone

Until the soundtrack

Of Jaws came on

Introducing the

Summer blockbuster

And all its spawn

In the Heat of the Night

With a single slap

The audience

Rises and it claps

Yet Portier was

Caught in a trap

And got a bad rap

Mr. Tibbs is the name

But did he really

Change the game

Or was

In the Heat of the Night

Just more of the same

For some Tibbs

Was Uncle Tom

Blaming Sidney

For being lame

Bonnie and Clyde

Was Morgan Fairchild’s

Very first flick

She was on the set

Because she could

Ride a stick

Kinda sums up her career

Dontcha think

The Graduate

Graduating to a star

Hoffman lowered the bar

Ben and Elaine

Bonnie and Clyde

Heroes as loners

And as crooks

As sex symbol

Dustin changed the look

The newest face

Now had a hook

That didn’t play

By the book

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Kissing in

The rearview

Guess Who

Addressed a taboo

But was it

Really a breakthrough

Who knew

That Hepburn and Tracy

We’re just as racy

The subject

Of much ballyhoo

Yet adultery was

Still a bugaboo

If The Graduate gets too much credit for truly pushing the envelope in the development of New Hollywood, then it cannot be overstated how influential it was in terms of the development of the character of the MILF. Mrs. Robinson, as played by Anne Bancroft, is a seminal figure. So to speak. MILFs have existed from the beginning of Western Culture. Jocasta, Oedipus’ Mother, quite possibly, is the Ur-MILF. She is at the center of psychoanalysis and fetish porn movies. The Wife of Bath is a MILF. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, has MILF elements. But Mrs. Robinson takes us into the modern era of the MILF, which is characterized by the decline of the nuclear family and the rise of divorce that accelerated the post-WWII era. The overwhelming dominance of MILF and Step Porn in terms of popularity can be directly tied to these factors. Without Mrs. Robinson there is no Stifler’s Mom or Stacy’s Mom or Angela White or Julia Ann.

What has changed from the tradition of the MILF is the age of the MILF. It keeps getting younger and younger. It is not uncommon for porn actresses in their mid-twenties to be playing trophy wife MILFs who seduce or get seduced by their stepsons. That said despite the decreasing age of the MILF with the popularity of actresses like Julia Ann or Angela White it can be tentatively suggested that the porn industry offers portrayals of sexually desirable older woman and even more complex and complicated ones at that than mainstream Hollywood ever did. An older woman with a sex drive is something out of a horror film in the mainstream. Think Fatal Attraction. Cougars are ferocious animals after all.

So, the soundtrack to The Graduate is far from groundbreaking and pales in comparison to the soundtrack to Easy Rider in terms of solidifying the power and marketability of the nascent rock industry in film. Sure, The Graduate soundtrack sold in big numbers, but it was precisely because it was so conservative and easy listening. It was not sex, drugs, and rock and roll like Easy Rider, but with Mrs. Robinson, The Graduate proved far more influential in the arena of sexual characterization thanalmost any movie in the 1960s. The song “Mrs. Robinson” may not have been fully formed at the time of the movie, but Anne Bancroft’s star turn is not only one of the first MILFs in the era of New Hollywood, but one of the most fully developed.