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Elaine May

Elaine May

Acting

Biography

Elaine Iva May (née Berlin; born April 21, 1932) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and director. She first gained fame in the 1950s for her improvisational comedy routines with Mike Nichols before transitioning her career, regularly breaking the mold as a writer and director of several critically acclaimed films. She has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013, and an Honorary Academy Award in 2022. In 1955, May moved to Chicago and became a founding member of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater group. She began working alongside Nichols and in 1957, they both quit the group to form their own stage act, Nichols and May. In New York, they performed nightly in clubs in Greenwich Village alongside Joan Rivers and Woody Allen, as well as on the Broadway stage. They also made regular appearances on television and radio broadcasts. They released multiple comedy albums and received four Grammy Award nominations, winning Best Comedy Album for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May in 1962. Their collaboration was covered in the PBS documentary Nichols and May: Take Two (1996). May infrequently acted in films, including Luv, Enter Laughing (both 1967), California Suite (1978), and Small Time Crooks (2000). She became the first female director with a Hollywood deal since Ida Lupino when she directed the 1971 black screwball comedy A New Leaf. Experimenting with genres, she directed the dark romantic comedy The Heartbreak Kid (1972), the gangster film Mikey and Nicky (1976), and adventure comedy Ishtar (1987). May later earned acclaim writing the screenplays for Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Mike Nichols' The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors each earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while the latter won her the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. May returned to acting in Woody Allen's Amazon Prime series Crisis in Six Scenes (2016) and on Broadway in the revival of the Kenneth Lonergan play The Waverly Gallery (2018) the latter of which earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. The win made May the second-oldest performer behind Lois Smith to win a Tony Award for acting. In 2022, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave May an Honorary Academy Award for her "bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director, and actress". Description above from the Wikipedia article Elaine May, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

The Good Fight
7.5

Picking up one year after the events of the final broadcast episode of "The Good Wife", an enormous financial scam has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia Rindell, while simultaneously wiping out her mentor and godmother Diane Lockhart's savings. Forced out of her law firm, now called "Lockhart, Deckler, Gussman, Lee, Lyman, Gilbert, Lurie, Kagan, Tannebaum & Associates", they join Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago's preeminent law firms.

The Good Fight

2017
The Merv Griffin Show
6.6

No description available.

The Merv Griffin Show

1962
American Masters
7.3

American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.

American Masters

1986
Omnibus
6.3

Omnibus is an American, commercially sponsored, educational television series.

Omnibus

1952
The Steve Allen Show
6.2

No description available.

The Steve Allen Show

1956
What's My Line?
7.0

Four panelists must determine guests' occupations - and, in the case of famous guests, while blindfolded, their identity - by asking only "yes" or "no" questions.

What's My Line?

1950
No image
7.5

Tonight Starring Jack Paar is an American talk show hosted by Jack Paar under The Tonight Show franchise from 1957 to 1962. It originally aired during late-night. During most of its run it was broadcast from Studio 6B inside the RCA Building. The same studio would also host early episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Its theme song was an instrumental version of "Everything's Coming Up Roses", and the closing theme was "So Until I See You" by Al Lerner.

Tonight Starring Jack Paar

1957
The Dinah Shore Chevy Show
6.4

The Dinah Shore Chevy Show is an American variety series hosted by Dinah Shore, and broadcast on NBC from October 1956 to June 1963. The series was sponsored by the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors and its theme song, sung by Shore, was "See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet", which continued to be used in Chevrolet advertising for several more years after the cancellation of the show.

The Dinah Shore Chevy Show

1956
The Graduate
7.6

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

The Graduate

1967
DuPont Show of the Month
7.4

DuPont Show of the Month is an acclaimed 90-minute television anthology series that aired monthly on CBS from 1957 to 1961. The DuPont Company also sponsored a weekly half-hour anthology drama series hosted by June Allyson, The DuPont Show with June Allyson. During the Golden Age of Television, DuPont Show of the Month was one of numerous anthology series telecast between 1949 and 1962. Superficially, it resembled Playhouse 90 and other anthologies, but DuPont Show of the Month focused less on contemporary dramas and more on adaptations of literary classics, including Oliver Twist, The Prince and the Pauper, Billy Budd, The Prisoner of Zenda, A Tale of Two Cities and The Count of Monte Cristo.

DuPont Show of the Month

1957
The Birdcage
7.1

A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen partner agree to put up a false heterosexual front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée's conservative parents.

The Birdcage

1996
Somebody Feed Phil
7.3

"Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal travels the globe to take in the local cuisine and culture of Bangkok, Lisbon, Mexico City and more.

Somebody Feed Phil

2018
Tootsie
7.2

When struggling, out of work actor Michael Dorsey secretly adopts a female alter ego—Dorothy Michaels—in order to land a part in a daytime drama, he unwittingly becomes a feminist icon and ends up in a romantic pickle.

Tootsie

1982
Crisis in Six Scenes
6.5

A comedy that takes place in the 1960s during turbulent times in the United States when a middle class suburban family is visited by a guest who turns their household completely upside down.

Crisis in Six Scenes

2016
Wolf
6.1

An aging publisher becomes a demon wolf and, with this newfound youthful vigor, fights to keep his job.

Wolf

1994
Reds
6.9

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.

Reds

1981
Primary Colors
6.3

In this adaptation of the best-selling roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 run for the White House, the young and gifted Henry Burton is tapped to oversee the presidential campaign of Governor Jack Stanton. Burton is pulled into the politician's colorful world and looks on as Stanton -- who has a wandering eye that could be his downfall -- contends with his ambitious wife, Susan, and an outspoken adviser, Richard Jemmons.

Primary Colors

1998
No image
N/A

No description available.

The Big Party

1959
Heaven Can Wait
6.6

Joe Pendleton is a quarterback preparing to lead his team to the superbowl when he is almost killed in an accident. An overanxious angel plucks him to heaven only to discover that he wasn't ready to die, and that his body has been cremated. A new body must be found, and that of a recently-murdered millionaire is chosen. His wife and accountant—the murderers—are confused by this development, as he buys the L.A. Rams in order to once again quarterback them into the Superbowl.

Heaven Can Wait

1978
Down to Earth
5.6

Struggling comic Lance Barton knows what it's like to die on stage. But when his life takes an unexpected turn - straight to heaven - Lance is sure there's been a mistake. Miraculously, he's right! An angel tells Lance he was taken prematurely but assures him he can be returned to Earth - in the aged body of a ruthless white billionaire. In this improbable reincarnation, Lance begins a hilarious quest to realize his showbiz dream...and, along the way, discovers the person he never imagined he could be.

Down to Earth

2001