Mrs. Robinson

"Mrs. Robinson" is a song by Simon and Garfunkel which appears in the film The Graduate (1967) and on their album Bookends (1968).

"And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,

Jesus loves you more than you will know"

In the film, listless recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has an affair with an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The song was not completed for the film; only snippets are heard as incidental music. When the film and the music became popular, Paul Simon put the snippets together into a complete song.

The lines:

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you"

are perhaps the most memorable. Paul Simon, a fan of Mickey Mantle, was asked on The Dick Cavett Show by Mantle why he wasn’t mentioned in the song instead of DiMaggio. Simon replied, "It's about syllables, Mick. It's about how many beats there are."

Audio sample: "Mrs. Robinson" (23 seconds)