“The Penn Graduate”
Photo credit: University Archives
Released in 1967, Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” is consistently ranked as one of the best films of all time. It’s also one of the highest grossing movies ever, when adjusted for inflation.
Starring Dustin Hoffman as recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock and Anne Bancroft as the seductive Mrs. Robinson, the film garnered seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Hoffman), Best Actress (Bancroft) and Best Director, which Nichols won.
Less known is “The Penn Graduate,” a comic strip parody of the film created by former Penn student Jerry Lukas.
In Lukas’ version, which ran in an April 1968 edition of the Daily Pennsylvanian, Hoffman’s Benjamin character is renamed “Pennjamin,” and is a student angling to beat the draft and avoid being sent to Vietnam.
Mrs. Robinson is replaced with Dean Robbinson [sic], dean of the College for Women, who wants to stop any potential “Rowbottoms.” A Rowbottom was an “unpredictable and sometimes unfortunate outlet for youthful energies” that also served as a rallying call for mass student disturbances. Pennjamin has planned a Rowbottom, but Dean Robbinson finds out about it and confronts him. Unless he stops it, she warns that she will see that Pennjamin is drafted.
Guest stars in the comic include caricatures of Simon & Garfunkel, President Lyndon Johnson, Philadelphia Mayor James Tate (called “Mayor Dictate”) and Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo.
For more information on historical events at Penn, visit the University Archives web site at www.archives.upenn.edu.
Originally published on Sept. 17, 2009
