The Graduate Returns to Berkeley

I’m just back from Berkeley, California, where the spirit of the Sixties lives on. Or at least tries to. Though I didn’t see any real live hippies, the campus of the University of California was full of chalked messages advertising a student protest. And in the recent election, voters apparently defeated (though narrowly) a measure that would make it a crime to sit or lie on sidewalks in Berkeley’s commercial areas between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. (Telegraph Avenue would never be the same without its laidback legions of scruffy sidewalk loungers.)

But I really thought about the Sixties when I stepped into my hotel, the venerable Durant. Years ago, the Durant was known for muted elegance. These days, however, it tries to induce nostalgia in its patrons by decorating in a style we might call “Sixties Revival.” The Durant’s lobby is graced by an odd chandelier that looks to be constructed out of old exam bluebooks. One wall features photos of student activist types. Across the corridor there’s a display of protest buttons, as well as a case containing a burned bra.

Upstairs, the theme continues. My room key-card bore an ID picture of a dude with an Afro. A room service menu suggested goodies that might be of interest “if you have the munchies.” The Do Not Disturb sign looked like an athletic sock, the kind you might hang on your doorknob to warn your roommate of romantic activity in progress. Bedside light fixtures vaguely resembled lava lamps. I was charmed by the black-and-white photo in the bathroom, of two long-haired young streakers who’ve just exuberantly flung off all their clothes for a romp in the woods.

In every one of the Durant’s guest rooms there’s a full-sized poster of a woman’s shapely leg, behind which stands a young man in a sports jacket, looking vaguely perplexed. The wording of course reads “This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.” It’s a reminder that –- even though its characters seem to have chosen their wardrobes in the JFK era –- The Graduate rocked moviegoers in 1967 because it captured the angst of young Baby Boomers on the brink of entering the adult world.

It’s wholly apt that the Durant uses The Graduate to represent Berkeley in the Sixties. After Dustin Hoffman’s Ben Braddock suffers through the stifling pretensions of nouveau-riche Beverly Hills, he finds personal liberation when he hops into his sports car and heads for Berkeley(famously going the wrong way on the Bay Bridge) to persuade Elaine Robinson to marry him. Director Mike Nichols did take his cast up north for some atmospheric shots along Telegraph Avenue. But permission to film on the UC Berkeley campus was denied, which is why the only genuine glimpse of the campus (a brief moment showing Elaine walking with friends near the famous Sather Gate) was shot guerrilla-style. Meanwhile, back in L.A., the University of Southern California stood in for UC Berkeley in several key scenes. The poignant sequence of time elapsing as Ben sits sadly by a campus fountain were shot in front of USC’s Doheny Library, as any Trojan would be happy to point out.

Though The Graduate so effectively embodies the spirit of the late Sixties, it contains neither hippies nor references to the Vietnam War. Years later, Katharine Ross acknowledged that while making The Graduate, “We were sort of still in the Fifties mentality.” It was only while the film was in production that “the Summer of Love happened in San Francisco, and Vietnam was about to blow the country apart and change us all forever.”