Mike Nichols, 83, Acclaimed Director on Broadway and in Hollywood, Dies

Mrs. Robinson's dad passed away… 

Mr. Nichols did win an Oscar for his second film, “The Graduate” (1967). A social satire that lampooned the Eisenhower-era mindset of the West Coast affluent and defined the uncertainty of adulthood for the generation that came of age in the 1960s, the film anticipated the anti-heroism of many Hollywood movies to come.

The film also made a star of an unknown actor, Dustin Hoffman, who was nearly 30 when he played Benjamin Braddock, the 21-year-old protagonist, a Southern Californian and a track star who sleeps with the wife of his father’s best friend and then falls in love with her daughter. A small, dark, Jewish New York stage actor (though he was born and raised in Los Angeles), Mr. Hoffman was an odd choice for the all-American suburban boy whose seemingly prescribed life path has gone awry.

R.I.P. for Mr. Nichols…