The summer of 1968 was folk: two years after their great success, "The Sound Of Silence", Simon and Garfunkel unveiled "Mrs Robinson". And it's a box, set in motion by the legendary film The Laureate , whose song is the soundtrack. It is the first big role of Dustin Hoffman, who lets himself be seduced by the wife of his father's boss, the intrepid Mrs Robinson ... But originally, the song should absolutely not speak of her.
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A verse in tribute to baseball player Joe DiMaggio
In the original song, Simon and Garfunkel indeed sing Mrs Roosevelt, not Mrs Robinson. Eleanor Roosevelt was a committed feminist, activist for the civil rights movement, and the wife of US President Franklin Roosevelt.
The original version also included a verse in tribute to Joe DiMaggio, a famous American baseball player, whom Paul Simon considered to be a straight and dignified man ... And this one has been kept in the version prepared for The Winner !
Once Mrs Roosevelt replaced in Mrs Robinson for the film, which greatly contributed to the success of the song, Simon and Garfunkel slipped it into Bookends , a foggy, disenchanted album on old age and abandonment ... which is one of the 500 best albums of all time according to the prestigious Rolling Stone magazine .