Although Murray Hamilton shares his screen credit with three fellow performers (Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey C. Kramer, and Susan Backlinie), his name is given prominence at the head of the list and is in a slightly larger font. In all fairness, as the movie's most important supporting character, he should have been given a single credit of his own or at least shared credit with Lorraine Gary.
Spielberg says that he always had the actor in mind for the role and in the Inside Jaws documentary singles out Hamilton's work supporting James Stewart in The FBI Story for praise. It's a curious choice as neither the movie nor Hamilton's performance were particularly notable. In fact, Hamilton was far more compelling that same year (1959) in his role as a bartender in Anatomy of a Murder, again supporting James Stewart. The latter film is rightly remembered for a number of reasons (its unflinching treatment of sex crime, its realistic portrayal of the courtroom trial process, its edgy jazz score, and its stark credit sequence) whilst the former -a pedestrian piece of propaganda made with the bureau's full co-operation - is largely forgotten.
Hamilton turned in solid performances throughout the Sixties both on the big screen (The Hustler, Seconds, No Way To Treat A Lady) and the small (Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Dr Kildare), but it was his role as the cuckolded husband in The Graduate in 1967 that was to cement his onscreen persona as a smug middle class materialist. Mr Robinson's exchange with a bemused Benjamin Braddock is driven by the same economic imperative that informs Larry Vaughn's insistence on keeping the beaches open.
Like Lorraine Gary, Hamilton reprised his character for the sequel and was one of the Jaws alumni who appeared in Spielberg's 1941.
