Mike Nichols Dies

Mike Nichols (born Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014) was a German-born American film and theatre director, producer, actor and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s with the improv troupe, the Compass Players, predecessor of the Second City in Chicago and as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. May was also in the Compass. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other films include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Closer, Charlie Wilson’s War (his final picture), and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.

Nichols was one of a small group of people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. His other honors included the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010. His films garnered a total of 42 Oscar nominations and seven awards.

Early Life and Education

Mike Nichols was born Mikhail Pavlovich Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte (nee Landauer) and Pavel Peschkowsky, a physician. His father was born in Vienna, Austria to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. 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. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. Nichols is a third cousin twice removed of scientist Albert Einstein, through Nichols' mother.

In April 1939, when the Nazis were arresting Jews in Berlin, seven-year-old Mikhail and his three-year-old brother Robert were sent alone to the United States to meet up with their father, who had fled months earlier. His mother eventually joined the family, escaping through Italy in 1940. The family moved to New York City on April 28, 1939. His father, whose original Russian name was Pavel Nikolaevich Peschkowsky, changed his name to Paul Nichols, Nichols derived from his Russian patronymic, and set up a successful medical practice in Manhattan, enabling the family to live near Central Park. Nichols' youth was especially difficult for him, as he explained, because “I was a bald little kid." By age 4, following an inoculation for whooping cough, he had lost his hair, and consequently wore wigs for the rest of his life.

Nichols became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944 and attended public elementary school in Manhattan (PS 87). After graduating from the Walden School, a private progressive school on Central Park West, Nichols briefly attended New York University before dropping out. In 1950, 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.

Indeed, while attending the university in the 1950s, Nichols began skipping class to engage in theatrical activities. He first met Elaine May at this time when she criticized his acting in a performance of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. It was at U/Chicago that Nichols made his theatrical debut as a director with a performance of William Butler Yeats’ Purgatory. Also there he met Susan Sontag (then known as Susan Rosenblatt), who considered Nichols her "best friend." In 1954, Nichols dropped out of the University of Chicago and moved back to New York City, where he was accepted into the Actors Studio and studied under Lee Strasberg.

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 and 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 and May

In 1955 Nichols was invited to join the Compass Players, which was predecessor to Chicago's Second City and whose members included Elaine May, Shelly Berman,m Del Close, and Nancy Ponder, directed by Paul Sills.

Nichols moved back to Chicago to perform comedy with Compass and started doing improvisational routines with Elaine May, which led to the formation of the comedy duo Nichols and May in 1958, which they began performing in New York City. Three records of their routines, best-sellers at the time, were released and the duo made appearances in nightclubs, on radio and on several television programs. They were invited to audition for Jack Rollins, who later became Woody Allen’s's manager and producer, and he was impressed, stating: "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. The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Personal idiosyncrasies and tensions eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in 1961. About their sudden breakup, director Arthur Penn said, "They set the standard and then they had to move on," while [at the time, a writer for Jack Paar and later a successful] talk show host Dick Cavett said "they were one of the comic meteors in the sky." Comedy historian Gerald Nachman describes the effect of their break-up on American comedy:

Nichols and May are perhaps the most ardently missed of all the satirical comedians of their era. When Nichols and May split up, they left no imitators, no descendants, no blueprints or footprints to follow. No one could touch them.

They later reconciled and worked together many times, such as on the unsuccessful A Matter of Position, a play written by May and starring Nichols. May scripted Nichols' films The Birdcage and Primary Colors. They appeared together at President Jimmy Carter’s inaugural gala and in a 1980 New Haven stage revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Swoosie Kurtz and James Naughton.

Career as a Director

After the professional split with May, Nichols went to Vancouver, B.C., to work in the theater directing a production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and acted in a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan.

In 1963, Nichols was chosen to direct Neil Simon’s play Barefoot in the Park. He realized at once that he was meant to be a director, saying in a 2003 interview: “On the first day of rehearsal, I thought, ‘Well, look at this. Here is what I was meant to do.’ I knew instantly that I was home”. Barefoot in the Park was a big hit, running for 1530 performances and earning Nichols a Tony Award for his direction. This began a series of highly successful plays on Broadway (often from works by Simon) that would establish his reputation. After an off-Broadway production of Ann Jellicoe’s The Knack, Nichols directed Murray Schisgal’s play Luv in 1964. Again the show was a hit and Nichols won a Tony Award (shared with The Odd Couple). In 1965 he directed another play by Neil Simon, The Odd Couple. The original production starred Art Carney as Felix Ungar and Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison. The play ran for 966 performances and won Tony Awards for Nichols, Simon and Matthau. Overall, Nichols won nine Tony Awards: including six for Best Director of either a play or a musical, one for Best Play, and one for Best Musical.

By 1966, Nichols was a star stage director and Time magazine called him "the most in-demand director in the American theatre." Although he had no experience in filmmaking, Warner Bros. invited Nichols to direct a screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The film was critically acclaimed, with critics calling Nichols "the new Orson Welles", and a financial success, the number 1 film of 1966. The film was considered groundbreaking for having a level of profanity and sexual innuendo unheard of at that time. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won five Academy Awards and garnered thirteen nominations (including Nichols' first nomination for Best Director), earning the distinctions of being one of only two films nominated in every eligible category at the Oscars (the other being Cimarron), and the first film to have its entire credited cast nominated for acting Oscars, a feat only accomplished twice more with Sleuth in 1972 and Give ‘em Hell, Harry! in 1975. The film also won three BAFTA Awards, and was later ranked #67 in AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10^th Anniversary Edition).

His next film was The Graduate (1967), starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katherine Ross. On its release, it grossed $50 million, making it both the highest grossing film of 1967 and one of the biggest grossing films in history up to that date. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Nichols won the Academy Award for Best Director. Hoffman credits Nichols for having taken a great risk in giving him, a relatively unknown, the starring role: "I don't know of another instance of a director at the height of his powers who would take a chance and cast someone like me in that part. It took tremendous courage." In 2007, The Graduate was ranked #17 in AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10^th Anniversary Edition).

Nichols was able to get the best out of actors regardless of their acting experience, whether an unknown such as Dustin Hoffman or a major star like Richard Burton. For his first film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, each of the four actors was nominated for an Oscar, with Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis winning. Burton later said, "I didn't think I could learn anything about comedy - I'd done all of Shakespeare's. But from him I learned," adding, "He conspires with you to get your best."

However, it was Taylor who chose Nichols to be their director, because, writes biographer David Bret, "she particularly admired him because he had done a number of ad-hoc jobs to pay for his education after arriving in American as a seven-year-old Jewish refugee." Producer Ernest Lehman agreed with her choice: "He was the only one who could handle them," he said. "The Burtons were quite intimidating, and we needed a genius like Mike Nichols to combat them." Biographer Kitty Kelley says that neither Taylor nor Burton would ever again reach the heights of acting performance as they had achieved in that film.^[

In the 1990s, Nichols directed several more successful, well-received films including Postcards from the Edge (1990) starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine; Primary Colors (1998) starring John Travolta and Emma Thompson; and The Birdcage (1996), an American remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lanem, Gene Hackman and Dianne West. Both The Birdcage and Primary Colors were written by Elaine May, Nichols' comedy partner earlier in his career. Other films directed by Nichols include Regarding Henry (1991) starring Harrison Ford and Wolf (1994) starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer. When he was honored by Lincoln Center in 1999 for his life's work, Elaine May--speaking once again as his friend--served up the essence of Nichols with the following:

"So he’s witty, he’s brilliant, he’s articulate, he’s on time, he’s prepared and he writes. But is he perfect? He knows you can’t really be liked or loved if you’re perfect. You have to have just enough flaws. And he does. Just the right, perfect flaws to be absolutely endearing."

Personal Life

Nichols was married four times. His first wife was Patricia Scott; they were married from 1957 to 1960. He was married to Margo Callas from 1963 to 1974, producing a daughter, Daisy Nichols. His third marriage, to Annabel Davis-Goff, produced two children, Max Nichols and Jenny Nichols. They were divorced in 1986. He married former ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer on April 29, 1988.

Nichols' grandfather, Gustav Landauer, was a leading theorist on anarchism in the early 20th century. According to research done by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University, in 2010 for the PBS series Faces of America, Nichols is related to Albert Einstein who was a third cousin on his mother's side.

Among Nichols' personal pursuits was a lifelong interest in Arabian horses. From 1968 to 2004, he owned a farm in Connecticut and was a noted horse breeder. Over the years, he also imported quality Arabian horses from Poland, some of which later resold for record-setting prices.

Nichols died of a heart attack on November 19, 2014, at his apartment in Manhattan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nichols