CREDITS THE GRADUATE , 1967 dir: Mike Nichols Dustin Hoffman Katharine Ross Anne Bancroft Murray Hamilton Anne Bancroft Buck Henry

“I want to say one word to you. Just one word.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Plastics.”

Dustin Hoffman shot to stardom in a role intended for Robert Redford, while Anne Bancroft created a such a screen monster that it's impossible to imagine Doris Day (the first choice) in the role.

Mike Nichols' stylish direction keeps the movie afloat long after younger films have got creaky with age. And how many times have you seen parodies, homages and plain rip-offs of the climax, with Benjamin hammering on the glass to disrupt Elaine's wedding?

The ‘Taft Hotel’, where graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) conducts an illicit affair with neighbour Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), was the old Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, midtown LA.

The Graduate location: Benjamin and Mrs Robinson meet up at the ëTaft Hotelí: Ambassador Hotel, Wilshire Boulevard, midtown LA

The hotel closed in 1989, living on as a much-used movie location until finally – and scandalously – being demolished in 2006. It played host to countless films over the years, including Oliver Stone’s The Doors, True Romance, S.W.A.T., Rocky and Se7en. And, of course, the kitchen was the site of the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 (fittingly, Emilio Estevez's Bobby was the last film to have scenes filmed at the hotel).

The university, attended by Benjaminís real love, who happens to be Mrs Robinson’s daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross), is supposedly ‘Berkeley’, over the Bay from San Francisco. For the most part, though, it’s the spacious Romanesque campus of the University of Southern California (USC), Jefferson Boulevard, bounded by Vermont Avenue, Exposition Boulevard and Figueroa Street, downtown LA.

The Graduate location: Benjamin waits for Elaine: fountain at the Doheny Memorial Library, University of Southern California

The fountain, alongside which Benjamin mopes about waiting for Elaine, is in front of the Edward L Doheny Jr Memorial Library, between Hoover Boulevard and Childs Way. Elaine’s dorm is the Von Kleinsmid Center of International and Public Affairs at USC.

The real Berkeley makes a showing, though. Benjamin drives south over the double-decker Oakland Bay Bridge, which is actually away from Oakland (if he had driven toward Oakland he would have been on the bridge’s lower deck, and therefore invisible).

Elaine walks through Sproul Plaza, and the frat house is Theta Delta Chi Fraternity House, 2647 Durant Avenue between Bowditch and College.

Benjamin follows Elaine to her meeting by the Monkey House in San Francisco Zoo, south of the Sunset district.

The gas station, where Benjamin tries to find out where Elaine is getting married by posing as a priest, is at Winchester Canyon, north of Santa Barbara.

The modernist church, where the wedding is finally disrupted by Benjamin hammering on the glass wall, is not in ‘Santa Barbara’ at all. It’s the United Methodist Church of La Verne, 3205 D Street, La Verne, about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.