Put it in Your Pantry With Your Cupcakes

I was just in my group chat with Nicole and Hannah (HI NICOLE AND HANNAH), which makes any day better, even a craptastic November day on which I am tired and my feet hurt and it started snowing at 3 p.m. and isn't supposed to stop until 6 a.m. The discussion ranged far afield from where it started, as is customary. At one point I said that our friend Beck's newsletter made me feel close to her because she likely felt the same about her gift list posts as I do about my year-end book posts - they're so much fun and also so much work. This reminded us of when Hannah did the hilarious post about People's Sexiest Men Alive issue (she said Richard Gere was a bit of a dick about vegetarianism and Buddhism and yet his stated goal of avoiding cruelty didn't keep him from singing in Chicago! I LOVE THIS).

Hannah then said she could take a stab at reviewing the list again if she even recognized any of the names, or if they weren't all so young that it felt inappropriate, whereupon Nicole naturally chimed in "coo coo coo choo, Mrs. Robinson", and we all laughed until she then casually napalmed us with the fact that we are all, in fact, now OLDER THEN MRS. ROBINSON

and we wait what-ed and looked it up and people, ANNE BANCROFT WAS 35 in The Graduate! Dustin Hoffman was only six freaking years younger than her. No damned wonder her cupcakes were still so perky.
View some hot pics of Anne Bancroft and read Nicole's post referring to it here. I find this so confusing. She looks older than 35, doesn't she? Isn't it always harder for actresses to get roles once they hit forty? Wouldn't this have been the perfect opportunity to cast an actress who was actually old enough to be Katherine Ross's mother, instead of someone only eight years older? Dustin Hoffman was 29, for frig's sake - in Hollywood years I think he was actually older than her! (I don't even know what I MEAN by that, I am just feeling SOME TYPE OF WAY HERE).

Here to make you sexually AND mathematically confused!

So I thought, well, maybe they just really really wanted Anne Bancroft to play the part, so they streaked her hair with some white and made her up a little older.

NOPE. "Mrs. Robinson is such a wonderfully rich role for a more mature woman" says the article I found (MORE MATURE? I have SALAD DRESSING older than her in this movie), and Dustin Hoffman was the perfect gawky unworldly youth, but neither of them were remotely the first choice for the roles.

Jeanne Moreau, Lana Turner, Shelley Winters, Angela Lansbury, Susan Hayward, Patricia Neal, Judy Garland and Doris Day were considered - Ava Gardner wanted it but they didn't want her, which, wut?

Jeanne Moreau would have been 39 playing Mrs. Robinson. Lana Turner would have been a senile, doddering 46! Susan Hayward would have been.... gasp... FIFTY! Never mind that we could have had The Graduate starring Angela Lansbury and Warren Beatty! (Dustin Hoffman thought they were making fun of him when they offered him an audition - then when he showed up they thought he was a messenger!) Robert Redford was in the running, but they didn't think he could pull off the part of the awkward underdog (which, no kidding). Dustin Hoffman was perfect. Anne Bancroft was perfect too, but geez, I guess I won't be making plans to seduce my daughter's boyfriend any time soon, and given how fervently I wish I hadn't just typed that sentence I guess that's all to the good.

Anne Bancroft also got an Oscar playing Annie Sullivan, a twenty-year-old, in The Miracle Worker, when she was thirty. I give up. I'm going to join Hannah who declares that she is now on the couch dying of old age. Also, now I want a cupcake.