---
name: "Elaine May"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/elaine-may"
fi1m_id: "elaine-may"
imdb_id: "nm0561938"
tmdb_id: 58251
wikidata_id: "Q454156"
roles: ["Writer","Director"]
born: "21 April 1932"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 8
average_fi1m_score: 78
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-10-04T23:45:26.016057+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Elaine May

## Identity

Elaine May

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/elaine-may
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** elaine-may
- **IMDb ID:** nm0561938
- **TMDB ID:** 58251
- **Wikidata ID:** Q454156
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_May, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q454156, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0561938/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/58251

Writer and director. Born 21 April 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Director
- **Born:** 21 April 1932, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- **Active:** 1971–1996
- **Also known as:** Esther Dale, Elaine Iva May, Elaine Iva Berlin
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 8: 3 directing, 2 writing, 2 crew, 1 other
- **Frequently works with:** [Charles Grodin](https://film.one/person/charles-grodin.md), [Jack Weston](https://film.one/person/jack-weston.md), [Warren Beatty](https://film.one/person/warren-beatty.md)
- **BAFTA Film Awards:** 1 BAFTA (1 won)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 78, as writer, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1960s 86 (1), 1970s 78 (3), 1980s 78 (2), 1990s 70 (2)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_May, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q454156, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0561938/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/58251

## Streaming the US now

- **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Birdcage*](https://film.one/film/the-birdcage.md) (81), [*Ishtar*](https://film.one/film/ishtar.md) (72)
- **Pluto TV:** [*Heaven Can Wait*](https://film.one/film/heaven-can-wait.md) (74)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Elaine May

> Elaine May writes comedy about people who are hopeless at the thing they most want to do, and she never looks away while they fail. Her scripts are sharp and generous at once; her films as director are rarer than they should have been.

The two men in *Ishtar* sit at a piano and write a song. It is a bad song, the film knows it, and Elaine May leaves the camera on them anyway, so that we see the work going in as clearly as we hear what comes out. That is her subject, on the page and behind the camera: people who cannot manage the ordinary thing, watched by someone who will not look away. In *The Birdcage* a small social adjustment becomes an undertaking requiring professional help, and the joke is the size of the fuss set against the size of the problem.

She came out of improvisation, with Mike Nichols at Chicago's Compass Players from 1955 and then as the double act Nichols and May into the early 1960s, and the habit stayed. As a director she let actors try things across many takes rather than hit marks. The films she wrote and directed in the 1970s, *A New Leaf* (1971), *The Heartbreak Kid* (1972) and *Mikey and Nicky* (1976), are the core of her reputation, and we have not reviewed them. She co-wrote *Heaven Can Wait* (1978) with Warren Beatty, directed *Ishtar* (1987), and then mostly wrote: credited work with Nichols on *The Birdcage* (1996) and *Primary Colors* (1998), and uncredited repairs on other people's comedies, *Tootsie* (1982) among them.

What she does well is a room. Her dialogue has a sharpness that survives a director softening it, which is more or less what Nichols does on *The Birdcage*, treating her lines with an affection for embarrassment that makes the film warm at some cost to the satire. Charles Grodin turns up in both *Heaven Can Wait* and *Ishtar* doing quiet, dry work, and both times he seems to know exactly what the writing wanted. We laughed at the songs in *Ishtar* and then felt protective of the men singing them, because May had filmed their effort as carefully as their failure, and that mixture of ridicule and tenderness is hers.

What she does less well is a plot. *Ishtar* is at its best when the two men are simply being bad at their profession, and the political intrigue keeps pulling them away from it. *The Birdcage* is slow to leave an embarrassment once it has found one, and too keen to keep everyone comfortable. *Heaven Can Wait* is gentle to a fault; we spent stretches of it waiting for it to get on. Across three scripts the pattern is the same: the scenes are better than the machinery that connects them.

She directed four features in sixteen years and none since *Ishtar*, after quarrels with studios over the cut that go back to *A New Leaf*. Start with *Ishtar*, for the songs and the friendship, and forgive it the desert. Then watch *The Birdcage* with company, and listen for the lines Nichols could not soften.

## Biography

Elaine May is an American comedian, actress, writer and director. Born Elaine Iva Berlin on 21 April 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she moved to Chicago in the 1950s and became a founding member of the Compass Players improvisational theatre group.

She first gained recognition performing with Mike Nichols as the comedy duo Nichols and May, appearing in nightclubs, on Broadway and in recordings. May later wrote and directed films including *A New Leaf* (1971) and *Mikey and Nicky* (1976). She wrote screenplays for *Heaven Can Wait* (1978), *The Birdcage* (1996) and *Primary Colors* (1998), and appeared in films such as *Small Time Crooks* (2000). She has received a BAFTA Award and a Grammy Award.

*Sources: jwa.org, en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, britannica.com.*

## On Fi1m (8)

### Directed (3)

- *Ishtar* (1987), Fi1m 72, Writer, Director, Songs — [page](https://film.one/film/ishtar.md)
- *The Heartbreak Kid* (1972), Fi1m 78, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/the-heartbreak-kid.md)
- *A New Leaf* (1971), Fi1m 83, as Henrietta Lowell — [page](https://film.one/film/a-new-leaf.md)

### Wrote (2) — the average rests on these

- *The Birdcage* (1996), Fi1m 81, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-birdcage.md)
- *Heaven Can Wait* (1978), Fi1m 74, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/heaven-can-wait.md)

### Crew (2)

- *Wolf* (1994), Fi1m 60, as Operator (voice) (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/wolf.md)
- *Tootsie* (1982), Fi1m 85, Additional Writing — [page](https://film.one/film/tootsie.md)

### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited

- *The Graduate* (1967), Fi1m 86, as Girl with Note for Benjamin (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/the-graduate.md)

## Complete filmography (27)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Same Storm* (2022), as Ruth Lipsman Berg
- *The Good Fight* (2017), series, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- *Mike Nichols: An American Master* (2016), Director
- *Crisis in Six Scenes* (2016), series, as Kay Munsinger
- *Down to Earth* (2001), Original Film Writer
- *Small Time Crooks* (2000), as May
- *Primary Colors* (1998), Screenplay
- *The Birdcage* (1996), Screenplay — Fi1m 81, [page](https://film.one/film/the-birdcage.md)
- *Wolf* (1994), as Operator (voice) (uncredited), Additional Writing — Fi1m 60, [page](https://film.one/film/wolf.md)
- *In the Spirit* (1990), as Marianne Flan
- *Ishtar* (1987), Director, Writer, Songs — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/film/ishtar.md)
- *American Masters* (1986), series, Director
- *Tootsie* (1982), as Additional Writing — Fi1m 85, [page](https://film.one/film/tootsie.md)
- *Reds* (1981), as Additional Writing — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/film/reds.md)
- *Heaven Can Wait* (1978), Screenplay — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/film/heaven-can-wait.md)
- *California Suite* (1978), as Millie Michaels
- *Mikey and Nicky* (1976), as Woman on TV (voice) (uncredited) · Director, Writer
- *The Heartbreak Kid* (1972), Director — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/film/the-heartbreak-kid.md)
- *Such Good Friends* (1971), Screenplay
- *A New Leaf* (1971), as Henrietta Lowell · Director, Writer — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/film/a-new-leaf.md)
- *All the Difference* (1970), as (voice)
- *The Graduate* (1967), as Girl with Note for Benjamin (uncredited) — Fi1m 86, [page](https://film.one/film/the-graduate.md)
- *Bach to Bach* (1967), as A Woman (voice) · Writer
- *Luv* (1967), as Ellen Manville
- *Enter Laughing* (1967), as Angela Marlowe
- *DuPont Show of the Month* (1957), series, as Candy Carter
- *Crackpot*, Director, Writer

## Gallery

- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-794a799b976e.jpg) Elaine May — The Morning Call newspaper, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Elaine_May_-_publicity1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Photo of Elaine May, Mike Nichols and Dorothy Loudon as panelists from the game show Laugh Line. (1959)](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-746b94927e50.jpg) Photo of Elaine May, Mike Nichols and Dorothy Loudon as panelists from the game show Laugh Line. (1959) — NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Elaine_May_Mike_Nichols_Dorothy_Loudon_Laugh_Line_1959.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Photo of Elaine May and Mike Nichols as publicity for a television special The Fabulous Fifties.](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-c4c5d17f0492.jpg) Photo of Elaine May and Mike Nichols as publicity for a television special The Fabulous Fifties. — The Bureau of Industrial Service for CBS Television, who aired the program.  In the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for networks, studios and program sponsors to use either ad or publicity agencies to distrubte publicity material.  The Bureau was a division of Ad Agency Young & Rubicam and was well-used for this purpose by those in the industry., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Elaine_May_and_Mike_Nichols_1960.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Publicity photo of Elaine May and Mike Nichols (1958)](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-e72f44d6e4ca.jpg) Publicity photo of Elaine May and Mike Nichols (1958) — McManus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/May_and_Nichols-1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-ce38ee175c19.jpg) Elaine May — Image via TMDB
- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-616d197e3231.jpg) Elaine May — Image via TMDB
- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-6d719f1cb49b.jpg) Elaine May — Image via TMDB
- ![President Obama Awards 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to Elaine May (2013)](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-a9c64ca8a071.jpg) President Obama Awards 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to Elaine May (2013) — U.S. government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Medal_of_Arts_award_2012.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-62c6cc6f9346.jpg) Elaine May — Image via TMDB
- ![Elaine May](https://film.one/media/person/86930/gallery-7bb121400e7d.jpg) Elaine May — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 2 nominated

- 1999: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *Primary Colors*
- 1979: Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated), for *Heaven Can Wait*

### BAFTA Film Awards — 1 won

- 1999: Best Adapted Screenplay (won), for *Primary Colors*

### Other awards — 3 won, 1 nominated

- Academy Honorary Award 2022: Academy Honorary Award (won)
- Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director 1988: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director (won), for *Ishtar*
- Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay 1988: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay (nominated), for *Ishtar*
- Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album 1961: Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album (won), for *An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/elaine-may