One of Nichols’ great innovations in The Graduate was to cast Dustin Hoffman—short, nondescript, obviously Jewish—in a role written as a WASPy Robert Redford type (“a walking surfboard,” in Hoffman’s words). Nichols himself was something of an inversion of that contrast—tall, blonde, and legendarily articulate and urbane, he was nonetheless a refugee from Hitler, a German-bor…
SOURCE: The New York Public Library at 05:02PM on November 20, 2014