- Janet Margolin, Take The Money and Run, 1968. Like so many of us, Woody Allen thought said satirists Elaine May and Mike Nichols were geniuses, “Just flabbegasting! She was a lovely creature who was just amazingly, inexplicably hilarious… everything she does is funny, everything she says. It’s in the voice. I’ve seen it before with Grouchol Marx … I offered her a part in the first movie I directed. She said: No, you wouldn’t want me. I have a neck brace.” But not in 1999 when she accepted Woody’s invite to join Small Time Crooks. Allen, said Chicago critic Roger Ebert , ‘bracketed himself between two of the funniest women in America, Tracey Ullman, who is seen too rarely, and Elaine May, who is hardly seen in movies at all.” Just 13 in 58 years! Including Girl With A Note For Benjamin in The Graduate. – directed, of course, by Mike Nichols.
- Audrey Hepburn, Two For the Road, 1966. Director Stanley Donen pleaded with Elaine to be Albert Finney’s American wife. “I don’t think she’d ever been in a movie at that point. She refused. Of course.” Earlier, the husband was the American and rejected bv Paul Newman and (so he claimed in his auto-bio) Tony Curtis. Then, he was nearly Michael Caine before Albie rushed to work with the glorious Hepburn. Donen thought May was an incredible actor, much better than her comedy partner, Mike Nichols. May was Donen’s longtime life partner. She gave him a medallion which said: STANLEY DONEN. IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO ELAINE MAY.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 2