Mike Nichols and Elaine May, 1960 by Richard Avedon
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Rewriting the Book on Elaine May for Her 90th Birthday
Rewriting the Book on Elaine May for Her 90th Birthday
Today is the 90th birthday of Elaine May (b. 1932). Having already done a post on her old comedy team with Mike Nichols, and one on Nichols himself (I’ll probably do at least one more), we thought it would be incumbent upon us to do one that focuses entirely on May herself.
She was, after all, as Nichols often admitted, the more brilliant of the two. The old narrative was that she was the star…
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Nichols had a chance to test that premise soon after The Odd Couple opened, when May called him and told him they should go to Alabama to perform for the civil rights protesters who were marching from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. The marches had been going on for two weeks, and the brutality with which state troopers and local racist militia had reacted was filling national newscasts. Nichols had been scheduled to leave for Hollywood to start preproduction on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He called Ernest Lehman, who warned him to stay away from political controversy.
May didn’t ask for much, but when she did, she meant business. “I said to Elaine, ‘He won’t let me.’ And she said, ‘You’re going.’ So I had to go,” said Nichols. “Mike was aware of the violence, and he was a bit concerned,” says Steinem. “But I remember him deciding to go.”
In Alabama, Nichols, May, and the other celebrities who had traveled from New York and Los Angeles—Sammy Davis Jr., Harry Belafonte, Leonard Bernstein, James Baldwin, Shelley Winters, Anthony Perkins, Peter, Paul, and Mary—“were met by a guy,” Nichols recalled, “who gave us each a dime to call the FBI in case anything went wrong. Really? Calling the FBI from a pay phone? Is that the best way to be safe?” That night, on a makeshift outdoor stage in sweltering heat, Nichols and May, scripts still in hand, performed a version of their telephone sketch, this time about Governor George Wallace, played by Nichols, trying to get past a bored operator to reach President Johnson
- FROM CHAPTER TEN: Funniest Distance Between Two Points (1964-1965) of MIKE NICHOLS: A LIFE by Mark Harris
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New headcanon dropped: Jeannie was also a fledgling standup comic, and met Jack on the nightclub circuit. By themselves they never generated many laughs, but once they teamed up as a comic duo audiences started responding. They could have been Gotham City’s answer to Nichols and May if Jeannie hadn’t had to go on bedrest, and if Jack hadn’t quit his day job to work on their material.
(Speaking of Nichols and May, that’s where I got this pose. )
(And here’s an example of one of Jack and Jeannie’s acts)
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Nichols and May would eventually make peace. Over the next five decades, they would perform together, collaborate many times as writer and director, act opposite each other, and heal their relationship. Nichols would never direct a movie without showing her the script.
— Mike Nichols: A Life
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Mike Nichols, November 6, 1931 - November 19, 2014.
With Elaine May. 1960 photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt.
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Nichelle Nichols, 1932-2022
(described in alt)
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