Elaine May Trailers
The Same Storm TrailerSmall Time Crooks TrailerNichols and May: Take Two Trailer
Elaine Iva May (née Berlin; born April 21, 1932) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and director. She first gained fame in the 1950s for her improvisational comedy routines with Mike Nichols before transitioning her career, regularly breaking the mold as a writer and director of several critically acclaimed films. She has received numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013, and an Honorary Academy Award in 2022.
In 1955, May moved to Chicago and became a founding member of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater group. She began working alongside Nichols and in 1957, they both quit the group to form their own stage act, Nichols and May. In New York, they performed nightly in clubs in Greenwich Village alongside Joan Rivers and Woody Allen, as well as on the Broadway stage. They also made regular appearances on television and radio broadcasts. They released multiple comedy albums and received four Grammy Award nominations, winning Best Comedy Album for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May in 1962. Their collaboration was covered in the PBS documentary Nichols and May: Take Two (1996).
May infrequently acted in films, including Luv, Enter Laughing (both 1967), California Suite (1978), and Small Time Crooks (2000). She became the first female director with a Hollywood deal since Ida Lupino when she directed the 1971 black screwball comedy A New Leaf. Experimenting with genres, she directed the dark romantic comedy The Heartbreak Kid (1972), the gangster film Mikey and Nicky (1976), and adventure comedy Ishtar (1987). May later earned acclaim writing the screenplays for Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Mike Nichols' The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors each earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while the latter won her the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
May returned to acting in Woody Allen's Amazon Prime series Crisis in Six Scenes (2016) and on Broadway in the revival of the Kenneth Lonergan play The Waverly Gallery (2018) the latter of which earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. The win made May the second-oldest performer behind Lois Smith to win a Tony Award for acting. In 2022, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave May an Honorary Academy Award for her "bold, uncompromising approach to filmmaking, as a writer, director, and actress".
Most Popular Elaine May Trailers
Total trailers found: 26
21 December 1967
A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
22 January 1960
The Fabulous Fifties, CBS, combines style, humor, and imagination. It was rich in touches of quality showmanship and equally rich in the memories of a decade which it revived.
25 February 1967
A machinist's apprentice in Depression-era New York, David dreams of becoming the new Ronald Colman. Defying the wishes of his parents, David lands a nonpaying job in a seedy theatrical production directed by broken-down ham Marlowe.
17 June 1994
An aging publisher becomes a demon wolf and, with this newfound youthful vigor, fights to keep his job.
03 March 1996
A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen partner agree to put up a false heterosexual front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée's conservative parents.
17 December 1982
When struggling, out of work actor Michael Dorsey secretly adopts a female alter ego—Dorothy Michaels—in order to land a part in a daytime drama, he unwittingly becomes a feminist icon and ends up in a romantic pickle.
20 March 1998
In this adaptation of the best-selling roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 run for the White House, the young and gifted Henry Burton is tapped to oversee the presidential campaign of Governor Jack Stanton.
25 December 1981
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
28 June 1978
Joe Pendleton is a quarterback preparing to lead his team to the superbowl when he is almost killed in an accident.
19 May 2000
A loser of a crook and his wife strike it rich when a botched bank job's cover business becomes a spectacular success.
19 March 1978
The misadventures of four groups of guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
16 February 2001
Struggling comic Lance Barton knows what it's like to die on stage. But when his life takes an unexpected turn - straight to heaven - Lance is sure there's been a mistake.
11 March 1971
After running out of funds, Henry Graham, a carefree playboy, plots to marry and murder wealthy botanist Henrietta Lowell.
21 December 1976
Nick is desperate, holed up in a cheap hotel, suffering from an ulcer and convinced that a local mob boss wants him killed.
26 July 1967
Depressed by the direction his life is taking, Harry decides to take his own life by jumping off the Manhattan Bridge.
24 March 1970
A presentation of key events in the life of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Beginning with the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, MLK is followed through major steps in his struggle to promote racial equality.
16 December 1971
Julie Messinger, a repressed woman, grapples with her hidden passions when a routine hospital visit for her husband, Richard, spirals into chaos.
15 May 1987
Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.
06 April 1990
After her husband loses his job, Marianne moves from Beverly Hills to a nightmare New York City. She hires ditzy psychic Reva to redecorate her apartment, and they end up being chased by a crazed killer.
17 December 1972
Three days into his Miami honeymoon with needy and unsophisticated Lila, Lenny meets tall, blonde Kelly.
14 October 2022
Snapshots of the tumults of the COVID-19 pandemic.
26 October 2016
With charm and wit, Nichols discusses his life and 50-year career as a performer and director.
22 May 1996
A documentary made for the PBS program American Masters about the comedy team Nichols and May.
23 September 1967
A Bach recording plays in a New York apartment, while off-screen a man and a woman in bed together for the first time engage in pseudo-intellectual conversation.
08 September 1988
Documentary about women in the film industry. Numerous notable actresses and female directors share their thoughts.
01 January 1970
From many distinguished American poets comes the connecting narrative for this gorgeously photographed treatise on America the Beautiful and America the Increasingly Ugly.
