Twelve Chairs with Mel Brooks

Elaine Garreau (second from left) with Mel Brooks and cast of Twelve Chairs

Today’s photograph concerns double cousins. (Double cousins share one set of grandparents. It can happen when two sisters marry two brothers.)

This is a photo of Elaine Garreau who was my grandfather’s double cousin. She was an incredible character with a toothless little dog and a bottle of gin in her handbag. I loved her to pieces.

She had a prolific acting career in the West End, but she hoped that being cast in Twelve Chairs by Mel Brooks would be her ticket to Hollywood success. (Here her face was stamped cancelled when her character dies and the hunt for the treasure begins.)

Elaine Garreau has her face stamped “cancelled” in Twelve Chairs

It wasn’t the springboard that she hoped it would be— have you seen Twelve Chairs—but the trip to Yugoslavia for the shoot was exciting even if it did not turn out to be a huge hit. Elaine found working with Mel Brooks to be delightful and he wrote her a fabulous letter after the wrap.