It’s The Sixties on Talkish with Halli Casser-Jayne when joining me at my table is author Beverly Gray whose new book is SEDUCED BY MRS. ROBINSON, HOW THE GRADUATE BECAME THE TOUCHTONE OF A GENERATION and author Pat Thomas, his book DID IT: FROM YIPPIE TO YUPPIE, JERRY RUBIN, AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY.
Those of you of a certain age are not going to believe this: On December 22nd the film The Graduate will celebrate it’s 50th Anniversary! Director Mike Nichol’s film was the most unexpected cinematic blockbuster of the sixties, the film contributing a wealth of iconic images to American popular culture. Mrs. Robinson, for instance played by the sultry and amused Anne Bancroft -- the original “cougar,” the image of her titillation of glimpsing a hapless young man through her shapely arched leg. The young man, Benjamin Braddock, portrayed by that mensch of a newly-discovered actor, the very young Dustin Hoffman. And the word ‘plastics” -- the mere mention of “plastics”—all indelibly etched over the past half-century as part of our vernacular. And once seen, who can forget the wedding scene that punctuates the spicy 1967 Mike Nichols comedy? When The Graduate was newly- released, it spoke to a generation of young people who questioned their place in a rapidly changing world. With that in mind author Beverly Gray puts, with gusto, The Graduate into historical context, offering new insights and newly-revealed factoids.
To those whom we call “Baby Boomers” the name Jerry Rubin is the personification of their generation. In DID IT! JERRY RUBIN: AN AMERIAN REVOLUTIONARY, author Pat Thomas brings us an oral and visual history of the infamous and ubiquitous Rubin in the first ever biography of the co-founder of the Yippies, Anti-Vietnam War radical, Chicago 8 defendant, NewAge/Self Help proponent, and social-networking pioneer. Rubin, the flamboyant 1960's radical who once preached distrust of "anyone over 30," carved himself a niche in the history of American radicalism with his energetic and sometimes comic gestures. In the 60s he was a revolutionary, in the 70s he became part of the “me” decade got into self-help and health food, in the 80s he became an entrepreneur becoming part of popular culture. After being hit by a car, he died at 56 in 1994, one of the father’s of radicalism, unlike his former comrade Abbie Hoffman, branded a sell-out.
The Sixties, Jerry Rubin, The Graduate, it’s a trip on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show the podcast posted at Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.
