Background
May, Elaine was born on April 21, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. May’s father was a Yiddish actor and comic, Jack Berlin, and the air of Jewish fatalism is always there in her work, tugging at the surreal flights.
( A Writers Guild Award nominee for Best Screenplay, here...)
A Writers Guild Award nominee for Best Screenplay, here is the complete script and special section "Talking with Nichols," with the director's comments on actors, directing, comedy, collaborations and more; commentaries on the production by Robin Williams, Nathan Lane and others involved in the film, stills, and complete cast and crew credits. 50 b/w photos. The Newmarket Shooting Script Series features an attractive 7 x 9 1/4 inch format that includes a facsimile of the film's shooting script, as chosen by the writer and/or director, exclusive notes on the film's production and history, stills, and credits.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557042772/?tag=2022091-20
(Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running...)
Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running Off Broadway hit features the work of three gifted playwrights. David Mamet's AN INTERVIEW is an oblique, mystifying interrogation. A sleazy lawyer is forced to answer difficult questions and to admit the truth about his life and career. The why and where of the interrogation provide a surprise ending to this brilliant twenty minute comedy. In HOTLINE by Elaine May, a neurotic woman with enough urban angst to fill a neighborhood calls a suicide crisis hotline late one night. The counselor who gets the call is overwhelmed - it is his first night on the job. This dark and desperate, wildly funny forty minute piece ends Act 1. A well to do psychiatrist has just discovered that her best friend is having an affair with her husband in Woody Allen's wildly comic second act, CENTRAL PARK WEST. She has invited the friend over for a confrontation after getting thoroughly soused. Meanwhile, the husband is about to run off with a college student. CENTRAL PARK WEST provides an hour of constant hilarity. "A wealth of laughter."-N.Y. Newsday "Lighter than air, an elegant diversion."-N.Y. Times
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0573695393/?tag=2022091-20
director filmmaker screenwriter actress
May, Elaine was born on April 21, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. May’s father was a Yiddish actor and comic, Jack Berlin, and the air of Jewish fatalism is always there in her work, tugging at the surreal flights.
Studied Stanislavsky method of acting with Marie Ouspenskaya.
Four films qualify anyone as a director, and one of those four, Mikey and Nicky, has a vital cult following, while lshtar is nearly proverbial for disappointment. The Heartbreak Kid— about a marriage that sees collapse and a fresh mate during the honeymoon—is the best, as well as the clearest indication of a startling satiricvision. Whereas Mikey and Nicky is a very different kind of film, far less coherent or shapely, but dedicated to a Cassavetes-like untidiness of personality. It’s a remarkable film, full of pain.
Say that, however, and you have to concede that she has never been more comfortable than she was in her dialogues with Mike Nichols—live in clubs, on record, and on Broadway. That partnership ended in 1961, but it has influenced so much of American comedy, not least the selfdeprecating humor of the modern woman. It’s not clear why they broke up, or even what they meant to each other personally. But whereas Nichols went on to a very successful (and organized) career as a director on stage and screen, May didn’t.
She has acted—in Luv (67, Clive Donner); Enter Laughing (67, Carl Reiner); A New Leaf; California Suite (78, Herbert Boss); In the Spirit (90, Sandra Seacat), where she does a double act with Mario Thomas.
She has also worked as a screenwriter, probably on more films than are known, for she has seemed to enjoy the anonymity of being a script doctor: Such Good Friends (71, Otto Preminger), under the name “Esther Dale”; Heaven Can Wait (78, Warren Beatty), cowritten with Beatty; as a w'riter on Tootsie (83, Sydney Pollack) and re writer for The Birdcage (96, Nichols)—by far the most obvious things she has done; and on Primary Colors (98, Nichols).
That all the external problems in filmmaking may pale beside indecisions that no one else in life can fathom. All stories of Elaine May describe a brilliant woman and artist, yet her record is that of someone who can hardly see in her own dark. Her role in Small Time Crooks (00, Woody Allen) only revived the old questions.
( A Writers Guild Award nominee for Best Screenplay, here...)
(Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running...)
(Drama - Anthology)
(Play)
Stage and radio appearances as child actor. Performed with Playwright's Theatre, in student performance Miss Julie, University Chicago. Appeared with improvisational theatre group in night club The Compass, Chicago, 1954-1957, (with Mike Nichols) appeared New York supper clubs, Village Vanguard, Blue Angel, also night clubs other cities.Television debut on Jack Paar Show, 1957. Also appeared in Omnibus, 1958, Dinah Shore Show, Perry Como Show, Laugh Line, Laugh-In, television specialists. Comedy albums include Improvisations to Music, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Mike Nichols and Elaine May Examine Doctors.Weekly appearance NBC radio show Nightline. Appeared (with Mike Nichols) NBC radio show, New York Town Hall, 1959, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Golden Theatre, New York City, 1960-1961. Theater appearances include The Office, New York City, 1966, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, 1980.Director plays The Third Ear, New York City, 1964, The Goodbye People, Berkshire Theater Festival, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1971, various plays at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, 1983. Director, author screenplay, actress film A New Leaf, 1972. Director films The Heartbreak Kid, 1973, Mikey and Nicky, 1976 (writer, director remake 1985), Ishtar, 1987 (also writer).Appeared in films Luv, 1967, California Suite, 1978 (Academy award Best Supporting Actress 1978), In The Spirit, 1990. Co-author screenplay Heaven Can Wait, 1978, Birdcage, 1996, Primary Colors, 1998. Author plays A Matter of Position, 1962, Not Enough Rope, 1962, Adaptation, 1969, Hot Line, 1983, Better Part of Valor, 1983, Mr.Gogol and Mr. Preen, 1991, (one act) Death Defying Acts, 1995, After the Night and the Music, 2005. Stage revue: (with Mike Nichols) Telephone, 1984.Co-recipient (with Mike Nichols) Grammy award for comedy performance, National Academy Recording Arts & Sciences, 1961. Actress (film) Small Time Crooks, 2000.
Married Marvin May (divorced). 1 child, Jeannie Berlin. Married Sheldon Harnick, March 25, 1962 (divorced May 1963).