Elaine May Is Academy Award Nominated Director

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.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.
In 1947, May studied acting under veteran theater and screen actress Maria Ouspenskaya.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.

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.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.