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 The Graduate

1967  Dustin Hoffman was in the movie "The Graduate" Most alfisti remember the movie because Dustin had a Duetto. The movie can bee seen here. The scenes were taken starting April 24 in 1967 so the Duettos used were from the same year. 

Oh, the beautiful leg with the nylon was not the leg of Ann Bancroft, who didn't want to be in that scene. Instead, young model Linda Gray was delighted to be in the picture, even though for just a few seconds. later, Linda was a TV-star in the Dallas serie, acting as Sue Ellen. 

The song "The Sound of Silence" was written by Paul Simon over a period of several months in 1963 and 1964. Throughout the month of January 1966 "The Sound of Silence" had a one-on-one battle with The Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" for the #1 spot on the BillboardHot 100. The former was #1 for the weeks of January 1 and 22 and #2 for the intervening two weeks. The latter held the top spot for the weeks of January 8, 15, and 29, and was #2 for the two weeks that "The Sound of Silence" was #1. Overall, "The Sound of Silence" spent 14 weeks on the Billboard chart. 

Released in October 1964, the album was a commercial failure and led to the duo breaking apart, with Paul Simon returning to England and Art Garfunkel to his studies at Columbia University. In spring 1965, the song began to attract airplay at radio stations in Boston, Massachusetts, and throughout Florida. The growing airplay led Tom Wilson, the song's producer, to remix the track, overdubbingelectric instrumentation. Simon & Garfunkel were not informed of the song's remix until after its release. The single was released in September 1965. 

The song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending January 1, 1966, leading the duo to reunite and hastily record their second album, which Columbia titled Sounds of Silence in an attempt to capitalize on the song's success. The song was a top-ten hit in multiple countries worldwide, among them Australia, Austria, West Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. Generally considered a classic folk rocksong, the song was added to the National RecordingRegistry in the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" in 2013 along with the rest of the Sounds of Silencealbum. Originally titled "The Sounds of Silence" on the album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., the song was re-titled for later compilations beginning with Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. 

The Graduate was a tremendous success and got the Oscar award, Mike Nichols did a great job. Simon and garfunkel made the memorable songs, The Sound of Silence, Scarborough Fair and of course Mrs Robinson. Perfect Spidermusic.

They actually used three Duettos in the movie. One has a licence target 5600, another spider used something like UOP567 (not sure about the correct numbers though) and another one yet, no number seen but definately a different Duetto. However, one of the spiders had sun visors and a Blaupunkt radio. There was no radio antenna on one of them neither. Yet another had no sun visors and a different radio. Useless knowledge but if you too have seen the Graduate over and over again, you might have noticed. otherwise, keep your eyes open the next time you see this classic movie.

Some interesting information is that Judy Garland, Ava Gardner and Doris Day were contenders for the part of Mrs Robinson.  In real life Anne Bancroft is only six years older than Dustin Hoffman. Sally Field, Patty Duke, Candice Bergen and Natalie Wood were considered for the role of Elaine. Then they had Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson in mind for Benjamin. But Dustin got the role, thank God.

Dustin Hoffman's uncle was head of the US Alfa Romeo importer Hoffman Auto in New Jersey and Dustin was keen on the Duetto. So it became a movie star.  The 665145 was in the most scenes, then there were two as back-ups. One was  totalled at Portland Raceways way back then. Third car- not a race car- might still be in stock condition somewhere in CA. 

After the scenes in the Graduate, the Duetto was sold to Lee Midgley for a dollar on the condition that it be turned into a race car. It had been damaged during the filming and that was why more car(s) were requested in order to finish the film. Lee began his very successful Alfa career in this car, which was prepared along with a second Duetto by John Shankle. In 1969 Dale MaGowan purchased the Duetto from Lee Midgley in June to be raced in the  SCCA. He enjoyed many race wins in 20+ years racing.  The Duetto is in Colorado now.  

Here is an official list of the results for the Duetto with Dale as driver from this link. 

Here it is in action at the Second Creek Raceway. It was first raced by drivers Midgely/Griffith and then in late 1968 by Dale MacGowen.

Pictures are from the movie.  Read more here about the Graduate movie.

Pictures from the movie "The graduate."

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