It’s not as if Elaine May wasn’t a beloved figure in American popular culture for most of her life. Her successful pairing with Mike Nichols as an innovative improv comedy team in the late ’50s may have been short-lived—the duo broke up at the height of their success in 1961—but is regularly cited as one of the most influential and well-remembered comedy acts the US has ever known. Subsequently, May embarked on a respectable career as a playwright and performer on and off Broadway, which allowed her to branch out into the cinema, just as her former partner-turned-filmmaker Nichols had followed up his own successes as a Broadway director with the filmic double whoopee of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967), establishing himself as one…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 92- Fall 2022