Elaine May

Infobox Actor
name = Elaine May


imagesize = 150px
birthname = Elaine Berlin
birthdate = birth date and age|1932|4|21
birthplace = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
spouse = Sheldon Harnick
(1972-1973) (divorced)
Marvin May
(?-?) 1 daughter
children = Jeannie Berlin (b.1949)
baftaawards = Best Adapted Screenplay
1998 "Primary Colors"
goldenraspberryawards = Best Director
1987 "Ishtar"
awards = Saturn Award for Best Writing
1978 "Heaven Can Wait"

Elaine May (born April 21 1932, Philadelphia) is a two-time Academy Award nominated director, screenwriter and actress. She achieved her greatest fame, in the 1950s, from her improvisational comedy routines in partnership with Mike Nichols.

Family background

Elaine Berlin was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of the theatre director and actor Jack Berlin and actress Ida Berlin. Ida Berlin would have a small role in her daughter's film, "A New Leaf". As a child, Elaine occasionally performed with her father in the Yiddish theater he ran. In 1942, the family moved to Los Angeles, California.

She married Marvin May in the late 1940s as a teenager and gave birth to a daughter, actress Jeannie Berlin (who is known by her mother's maiden name) in 1949; the couple later divorced. In 1972, she married lyricist Sheldon Harnick, best known for his work in "Fiddler On The Roof". However, they divorced a year later.

Career

tage

In 1947, May studied acting under veteran theater and screen actress Maria Ouspenskaya. Fact|date=January 2008

In 1950, May attended the University of Chicago and Playwrights Theatre in Chicago. In 1953, she became a member of the improvisational theatre group The Compass Players, founded by Paul Sills and David Shepherd, which later became The Second City. She remained a member until 1957.

During her membership, May met Mike Nichols, who was then starring in one of Sills' plays, and began a successful partnership with him. Together they formed a standup comic duo, performing in New York clubs and making several TV appearances.

In 1960, they made their Broadway debut with "An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May"; the original-cast album won the Grammy Award in 1962 for Best Comedy Performance. Throughout the 1960s, thanks in part to the successful work with Nichols, May wrote, directed, and acted in various forms of theatre. In addition, she wrote and performed for radio and recorded several comedy albums. Her work with Nichols during this time was critical to establishing improvisation as a form of comedy. Their stage act and records featured just the two voices with a solo pianist - played by Marty Rubenstein.

May formed and directed an improvisational company called The Third Ear in New York that included Reni Santoni, Peter Boyle, Renee Taylor, and Louise Lasser. On Tuesday nights the cast would improvise with invited guests, like Mark Gordon who had also been in The Compass.

May also wrote several plays during this period. Her greatest success was the one-act "Adaptation". Other stage plays she has written include "Not Enough Rope", "Mr Gogol And Mr Preen", "Hot Line", "After the Night and the Music", "Power Plays", "Taller Than A Dwarf", and "Adult Entertainment". She also directed the off-Broadway production of "Adaptation/Next".

Nichols and May starred together in a stage version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Long Wharf Theatre in 1980. Nichols had directed the film version in 1966.

Film

Directing

May made her film writing and directing debut in 1971 with "A New Leaf", a screwball comedy starring Walter Matthau and her. Originally, May handed in a 180-minute black comedy that the studio cut into a 102-minute weird romance. The film was turned into an Off-Broadway musical, "The Green Heart", which bears little resemblance to the film, however.

Her second directorial effort was "The Heartbreak Kid". This comedy was critically lauded and modestly popular, based on a screenplay by Neil Simon, and starring Charles Grodin, Eddie Albert, and May's own daughter, Jeannie Berlin. May followed up these two comedies with a bleak crime story entitled "Mikey and Nicky" in 1976.

May’s next directorial effort, "Ishtar" (1987), was her last. Largely shot on location in Morocco, the production was beset by internal difficulties, and advance publicity was so negative that the picture never got off the ground, becoming one of the biggest cinematic disasters of its day.

Writing

Elaine May received an Oscar nomination for updating "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" as "Heaven Can Wait". May reunited with her former comic partner, Mike Nichols, with "The Birdcage" in 1996. The film relocated the classic French farce, "La Cage aux Folles", from France to South Beach, Miami. May received her second Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay when she again worked with Nichols on "Primary Colors" in 1997.

Trivia

It is suggested in Janet Coleman's book "The Compass" that Elaine May and Mike Nichols had a short affair early in their association. When Elaine and Mike Nichols were asked by Tommy Smothers at a comedy festival in 1999 "so did you guys have an affair or what?" Elaine replied, "Exactly".

Filmography

Films as writer

* "Such Good Friends" (1971) - Under the pseudonym Esther Dale
* "Heaven Can Wait" (1978) - Co-Writer (Oscar nominee and WGA winner)
* "Reds" (1981) - Co-Writer (Uncredited)
* "Tootsie" (1982) - Co-Writer (Uncredited)
* "Labyrinth" (1986) - Co-Writer (Uncredited)
* "Dangerous Minds" (1995) - Co-Writer (Uncredited)
* "The Birdcage" (1996) (WGA nominee)
* "Primary Colors" (1998) (Oscar nominee and WGA nominee)

Films as writer and director

* "A New Leaf" (1971) - also role as Henrietta Lowell (WGA nominee)
* "Mikey and Nicky" (1976)
* "Ishtar" (1987)

Films as director

* "The Heartbreak Kid" (1972)

Films as actress

* "Enter Laughing" (1966) - as Angela
* "Luv" (1967) - as Ellen Manville
* "Bach to Bach" (1967) - as a Woman
* "A New Leaf" (1971) - as Henrietta Lowell (Golden Globe nominee, Best Actress (musical or comedy))
* "California Suite" (1978) - as Millie Michaels
* "In the Spirit" (1990) - as Marianne Flan
* "Small Time Crooks" (2000) - as May (National Society of Film Critics winner, Best Supporting Actress)

External links

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Persondata

NAME= May, Elaine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Berlin, Elaine
SHORT DESCRIPTION= director, screenwriter and actress
DATE OF BIRTH= 1932-04-21
PLACE OF BIRTH= Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=