It was impossible to be unimpressed by Mike, though. His first film, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” had just been nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, including Best Directing and Best Picture. I’d enjoyed his version of “Barefoot in the Park” on Broadway, and I loved the comedy routines he’d done with Elaine May. Still—me, playing a six-foot gentile? I had to draw the line somewhere.
“I hear you don’t think you’re right for the part,” Mike said on the phone. “So who is right for it?”
There happened to be a copy of Time on the coffee table in front of me; on the cover was a sketch of a handsome, blond, athletic fellow meant to represent Americans “Twenty-five and Under.” “The guy on the cover of Time,” I said.
“You’re saying you’re not right for it because you’re Jewish,” Mike said.
“Well, because Benjamin’s so not Jewish.”
There was a pause. Then Mike said, “Maybe he’s Jewish inside.”
By that time, they’d been trying to cast the part for almost two years. “Robert Redford and Candice Bergen, the ideal couple—that’s what we were thinking,” Buck Henry, the film’s co-screenwriter, said about casting Benjamin and his love interest, Elaine. But they’d already seen Redford—and pretty much everyone else—by the time they got around to me and Katharine Ross. Nothing had clicked. I still maintain that if I’d read for them at the beginning of their search, instead of at the bitter end, I never would have got the part.
The irony is that I was just starting to become successful in theatre, the world I’d inhabited for almost a decade. I was in “Eh?” Off Broadway, and I was having a great experience: lots of laughs, standing ovations almost nightly, my face on the cover of the Arts section of the Times. I was finally making a living doing what I loved. It was as if I’d been hiking up a mountain and, just when I could finally see the summit, here comes Mike in a helicopter, offering me a ride to a different peak.
Hollywood had never been my endgame. As far as I was concerned, the studios kept beautiful people imprisoned in seven-year contracts. I wasn’t beautiful, and I didn’t want to be trapped. To be honest, I looked down on American movies, compared with theatre. When it came to breakthrough cinema, the kind made in Europe by greats like Truffaut, Buñuel, Antonioni, and Godard, Hollywood had yet to see the light.
My agent convinced me that I should screen-test for Mike, despite my reservations. I told my castmates in “Eh?” not to worry; I was sure they wouldn’t need to replace me. Then I walked to my neighbor on Eleventh Street, Mel Brooks, who’d suggested that I play a small part in “The Producers.” I called up to his window: “They’re flying me out to audition for a Mike Nichols movie.”
“What part?” he asked.
“The lead,” I told him.
“Good luck!” he said, suppressing a laugh. “Keep me posted!”
I had to learn ten pages in less than forty-eight hours. I stayed up the entire night running lines; by the time I landed in Los Angeles, I hadn’t slept in two days. Mike’s office was a series of palatial rooms with high ceilings, and in my memory it included a bar, which is where I first saw him. “Oh, hi, would you like a drink?” he said. He was always so casual, almost seductive. Then they brought in Katharine Ross, who was outrageously beautiful. I felt foolish, like I had to apologize to her for looking like I did.