Whether or not you realize it, you've probably enjoyed Elaine May's work. Although better known as half of the cerebral comedy improv duo Nichols and May, the writer/director/ performer has also rewritten some of Hollywood's most popular and critically acclaimed movies without taking a screen credit.
Tootsie, Reds, and Dangerous Minds all benefited from May's incisive storytelling skills and keen ear for dialogue. Screenplays that May has received credit for include Heaven Can Wait, The Birdcage and Primary Colors, the first two directed by her ex-performing partner Mike Nichols.
The pair met initially as students at the University of Chicago, but didn't link up as a team until 1955, when both joined the Compass Players, a Chicago improv troupe that later became Second City. When the Compass Players disbanded, Nichols and May continued performing together. By the late 1950s, they were the darlings of the hip intellectual scene, wowing audiences with their urbane, razor sharp repartee in New York's cabaret clubs. Their first album, Improvisations to Music, featuring spontaneous routines spoofing everything from modern advertising to Cold War paranoia, was an immediate hit upon its 1959 release.
In 1960, their first Broadway sketch comedy show, "An Evening With Nichols and May," and appearances on The Jack Paar Show and The Steve Allen Show catapaulted them to national prominence. At the height of their fame, the duo surprised everyone by going their separate ways, eager to explore other creative avenues. Nichols moved into directing movies, hitting bull's eyes on his first two attempts with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, the latter winning him an Oscar as Best Director.
May, however, preferred to fly lower on the celebrity radar as an Off-Broadway theatre playwright and director. But soon she, too, moved into movies, making her writing and directing debut in 1971 with the hilarious A New Leaf, playing a klutzy botanist heiress wooed by Walter Matthau's unscrupulous penniless playboy.
May did not write or appear in her second directing effort, The Heartbreak Kid, which boasted a script by Neil Simon. Instead, in what one critic called "one of the cruelest acts ever perpetrated by a mother against a child," she cast her daughter, Jeannie Berlin, as a hapless new bride abandoned on her honeymoon by her husband, played with his customary deadpan insouciance by Charles Grodin.
May has written and directed two other movies, 1976's Mikey and Nicky, and, in 1987, Ishtar, a funny, light farce featuring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman that has been unfairly lambasted more for its costly budget than its undoubted comedic value. May's onscreen appearances have -- sadly for fans -- been few and far between. Since A New Leaf, she has acted in only three movies. After Neil Simon's California Suite in 1978, she starred in 1990 with her friend Marlo Thomas in the black comedy In the Spirit, co-written by her daughter. Just this year, May earned rave reviews playing a spacey dimwit in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, forging a comedic connection with Allen reminiscent of her symbiotic relationship with Nichols. Her scene-stealing turn inspired one reviewer to gush "she's simply flabbergasting," with several others mentioning a possible Oscar nomination.
Always subtle, never showy, Elaine May is a real rarity in the attention-hungry world of entertainment--a genuine comic talent who shuns celebrity, preferring to concentrate instead on producing consistent, quality work. 
