Happy Birthday, Mike Nichols! Born today in 1931 as Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky, this American comedian, actor, producer and film and theatre director was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres.
He was also known for his aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their experience.
Born in Berlin, Germany, Nichols’ father's family had been wealthy and lived in Siberia, leaving after the Russian Revolution, and settling in Germany around 1920. Nichols’ mother’s family were German Jews.
Nichols was a third cousin twice removed of Albert Einstein. This was through Nichols' mother.
In April 1939, when the Nazis were arresting Jews in Berlin, seven-year-old Nichols and his three-year-old brother Robert were sent alone to the United States to join their father, who had fled months earlier.
His mother joined the family by escaping through Italy in 1940. The family then moved to New York City, New York in late April 1939.
Nichols’ father, whose original name was Pavel Nikolaevich Peschkowsky, changed his name to Paul Nichols.
Before Paul had received his U.S. medical license, he was employed by a union on 42nd Street, X-raying union members. He later had a successful medical practice in Manhattan, enabling the family to live near Central Park.
As Nichols later recalled of his father: “Before he established his practice, he was a union doctor, and part of his job was X-raying union members. They didn't know about shielding X-ray machines, and he died of leukemia at 44.” [in 1944].
Nichols' youth was difficult because by age 4, following an inoculation for whooping cough, he had lost his hair, and consequently wore wigs and false eyebrows for the rest of his life.
In 1944, he later became a naturalized citizen of the United States and attended public elementary school in Manhattan.
Nichols briefly attended New York University before dropping out. In 1950. Afterwards, he enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Chicago.
He later described this college period as "paradise," recalling how "I never had a friend from the time I came to this country until I got to the University of Chicago."
While in Chicago in 1953, Nichols joined the staff of struggling classical music station WFMT, 98.7 FM, as an announcer. Co-owner Rita Jacobs asked Nichols to create a folk music program on Saturday nights, which he named The Midnight Special.
He hosted the program for two years before leaving for New York City. Nichols frequently invited musicians to perform live in the studio.
This eventually created a unique blend of "folk music and farce, showtunes and satire, odds and ends," along with his successor Norm Pellegrini. The program endures today in the same time slot.
Nichols first made eye contact with Elaine May ('The Heartbreak Kid'). She was sitting in the front row when Nichols was playing the lead rollin a Chicago production of Miss Julie.
Weeks later he ran into her in a train station where he started a conversation in an assumed accent, pretending to be a spy, and she played along, using another accent.
They hit it off immediately, which led to a brief romance. Later in his career, Nichols said "Elaine was very important to me from the moment I saw her.”
In 1953, Nichols left Chicago for New York City to study method acting under Polish-born American actor, director, and theatre practitioner Lee Strasberg, but was unable to find stage work there.
He was later invited back to join Chicago's Compass Players in 1955, the predecessor to Chicago's Second City, whose members included May, among others.
Nichols had established himself as the straight-man and half of the popular live American improvisational comedy duo act in the late 1950s.
In Chicago, he started doing improvisational routines with May, which eventually led to the formation of the comedy duo Nichols and May in 1958, first performing in New York City.
Though Nichols began his career as in improvisational comedian, he later gained a degree of popularity with May.
They both performed live satirical comedy acts and eventually released three records of their routines, which became best-sellers. They also appeared in nightclubs and were on radio and television.
American film and television producer and talent manager of comedians and television personalities Jack Rollins, of whom later became Woody Allen's manager and producer, invited them to audition and was most impressed.
He said: "Their work was so startling, so new, as fresh as could be. I was stunned by how really good they were, actually as impressed by their acting technique as by their comedy ... I thought, My God, these are two people writing hilarious comedy on their feet!”
In 1960, Nichols and May opened the Broadway show An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, directed by Arthur Penn (‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘Little Big Man’).
The act later became a hit on Broadway, and was also the first of their three albums that won a Grammy Award.
Unfortunately, personal idiosyncrasies and tensions eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in 1961.
About their sudden breakup, Penn said, "They set the standard and then they had to move on," while Dick Cavett said "they were one of the comic meteors in the sky.”
Despite the breakup, Nichols found his first greatest success on Broadway. It was here where he collaborated extensively with Neil Simon.
Nichols' Broadway directing debut was directing Simon's Barefoot in the Park in 1963, with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley.
Afterwards, Nichols directed Luv in 1964, and in 1965 directed another Simon play, The Odd Couple. For this, Nichols received a Tony Award for each of those plays.
After Nichols and May disbanded in 1961, the former began directing plays, and quickly became known for his innovative productions and ability to elicit polished performances.
The theatrically trained Nichols had excelled at adapting plays and novels for the screen, and eliciting superb performances from his actors.
Nichols passed from a heart attack in Manhattan, New York City, New York on November 19, 2014. He was 83. This was almost two weeks after his birthday.
Nichols had collaborated with such renowned writers as May as well as American actor, writer, film director, comedian and television director Henry Zuckerman (credited as Buck Henry).
In the late 1960s, Nichols directed the first film of which he is best known. This was the 1966 American black and white dark comedy film 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. The film was Nichols' directorial debut.
The screenplay by American screenwriter Ernest Lehman is an adaptation of American playwright Edward Albee's 1962 play of the same name.
Albee's play was replete with dialogue that violated the standard moral guidelines for movies at the time, including multiple instances of "goddamn" and "son of a bitch", along with "screw you", "up yours", "monkey nipples" and "hump the hostess".
It had opened on Broadway during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and audiences who had gone to the theater to forget the threat of nuclear war were shocked by the provocative language and situations they had not seen before outside of experimental theater.
The immediate reaction of the theater audiences, eventually voiced by critics, was that Albee had created a play that would be a great success on Broadway, but could never be filmed in anything like its current form.
Neither the audience nor the critics understood how much the Hollywood landscape was changing in the 1960s, and that it could no longer live with any meaningful Production Code.
In bringing the play to the screen, Lehman decided he would not change the dialogue that had shocked veteran theatergoers in New York only four years earlier. Despite serious opposition to this decision, Lehman prevailed.
The following year, 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' was nominated for thirteen Oscars. This included Best Picture and Best Director or Nichols.
All four main actors were nominated in their respective acting categories, the first time a film's entire credited cast was nominated. However, the film only won five.
This was for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Elizabeth Taylor), Best Actress in a Supporting Roel (Sandy Dennis), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. This occurred at the 39th Academy Awards in mid-April 1967.
'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' had lost to Fred Zinnemann's ('High Noon', 'From Here to Eternity') 1966 British Technicolor biographical drama film 'A Man for All Seasons'.
'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is one of only two films to be nominated in every eligible category at the Academy Awards (the other being the 1931 American Pre-Code black and white Western/drama film 'Cimarron').
This was for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay awards, and neither Richard Burton nor George Segal won in his category.
One year later, Nichols directed the second and final film of which he is best known. This was the 1967 American romance/comedy film 'The Graduate'. It was based on American novelist Charles Webb's romance fiction novel of the same name.
When Dustin Hoffman auditioned for the role of Benjamin Braddock, he was just short of his 30th birthday at the time of filming.
He was asked to perform a love scene with Katherine Ross, having previously never done one during his acting classes.
He believed that, as he said later, "a girl like [Ross] would never go for a guy like me in a million years." Ross agreed, believing that Hoffman "look[ed] about three feet tall ... so unkempt. This is going to be a disaster."
American film producer Joseph E. Levine later admitted that he at first believed that Hoffman "was one of the messenger boys." Despite—or perhaps because of—Hoffman's awkwardness, Nichols chose him for the film.
"As far as I'm concerned, Mike Nichols did a very courageous thing casting me in a part that I was not right for, meaning I was Jewish," said Hoffman.
"In fact, many of the reviews were very negative. It was kind of veiled anti-Semitism.... I was called 'big-nosed' in the reviews, 'a nasal voice'."
Nonetheless, Hoffman was paid $20,000 for his role in the film, but netted just $4,000 after taxes and living expenses.
'The Graduate' was the film debut of Richard Dreyfus. He has a brief appearance in the film. credited as Boarding House Resident.
American actor, screenwriter, and director Buck Henry, of whom co-wrote for 'The Graduate' has a cameo in the film. He is credited as Room Clerk.
The film boosted the profile of folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. Originally, Nichols and O'Steen used their existing songs like "The Sound of Silence" merely as a pacing device for the editing.
This was until Nichols decided that substituting original music would not be effective and decided to include them on the soundtrack, an unusual move at that time.
According to the May 15, 2005 Variety article by American journalist and film producer Peter Bart, Lawrence Turman, the producer of 'The Graduate', then made a deal for Paul Simon to write three new songs for the film.
By the time they had nearly finished editing the film, Simon had written only one new song. Nichols begged him for more, but Simon, who was touring constantly, told him he did not have the time.
However, he did play him a few notes of a new song he had been working on; "It's not for the movie... it's a song about times past—about Mrs. Roosevelt and Joe DiMaggio and stuff." Nichols advised Simon, "It's now about Mrs. Robinson, not Mrs. Roosevelt."
The following year, 'The Graduate' received six Oscar nominations but one win for Best Directing. This occurred at the 40th Academy Awards in mid-April 1968.
On a budget of $3 million, 'The Graduate' went on to gross $104.9 million, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1967 worldwide.
Adjusted for inflation, 'The Graduate' grossed $805 million, making it the 23rd highest-ever grossing film in North America. It later received $85 million in worldwide rentals.
Roger Ebert praised the film, along with American film critic A.D. Murphy of Variety. Ebert described it as a "delightful satirical comedy-drama". He also claimed it was the "funniest American comedy of the year".
In 1996,' The Graduate' was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
'The Graduate' is ranked by the American Film Institute as the 17th greatest American film of all-time.
On AFI's 100 Years... 100 Quotes list, "Mrs. Robinson you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" ranked in at #63.
Among his credits, Nichols is also known for directing 'Catch-22' (1970), 'Carnal Knowledge' (1971), 'Silkwood' (1983), 'Working Girl' (1988), 'Wolf' (1994), 'The Birdcage' (1996), 'Closer' (2004), and 'Charlie Wilson's War' (2007).
May had collaborated with Nichols on two of his films. These included writing the screenplays for 'The Birdcage' and 'Primary Colors' (1998).
Throughout his career, Nichols became one of the most decorated directors of stage and screen, earning several Tony Awards for his work on Broadway. This was while helming seminal Academy Award-winning films.
In 2010, at the AFI's "Life Achievement Award" ceremony, May gave a humor-filled tribute to Nichols.
In 2012, Nichols won his sixth Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play with a revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Nichols directed and/or produced more than twenty-five Broadway plays.
In 2013, 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
According to Nichols' personal life, he had been married four times. His fourth and final wife was the most notable, being Diane Sawyer. They were married in 1988, and remained so until Nichols' death.
Nichols' productions focused on the absurdities and horrors of modern life as revealed in personal relationships.
A deft humorist and social critic, he managed to skewer mainstream sensibilities in crowd-pleasing work throughout most of his career.
Nichols had been active from 1955–2014.
#borntodirect
@libraryofcongress
@AmericanFilmInstitute
@Criterion
@tcm
@RogerEbert
@nytimes
@vanityfairmagazine
@Variety
@Britannica
@pbs
@thesecondcity
@BroadwayWorld
No comments:
Post a Comment