This is definitely one Hollywood story that's got legs... in an interview with George Hook six years ago, actor Linda Gray revealed that the stockinged leg that features on the poster for Mike Nichols' The Graduate was in fact hers and not that of the film's star Anne Bancroft.
Framed within a peephole, the poster shows a woman rolling on a stocking as an enraptured Dustin Hoffman looks on. All that can be seen of her is an arm, a leg and a hand. But the woman to whom these limbs were thought to belong to was apparently unavailable for poster-posing duties that day.
"I knew the photographer and he asked me to come down in her absence," Gray told George. "I got paid $25 (€15-20). For one leg, that was good."
Ironically, Gray would go on to star in The Graduate in the West End in 2001, in what was her first nude scene as an actress.
Gray began her career as a model before moving into acting. Her most famous role being that of Sue Ellen Ewing, the wife of JR, played by Larry Hagman, in hit TV show Dallas.
The use of body doubles is not as frequent on promo images as in films themselves, but there have been a few key instances. The most famous is the grafting of Julia Roberts's head onto Shelley Michelle's body for the poster for Pretty Woman.
