Nichols and May

Nichols and May was a Grammy Award-winning American improvisational comedy duo act developed by Mike Nichols (1931-2014) and Elaine May (born 1932). Their three comedy albums reached the Billboard Top 40 between 1959 and 1962. Many comedians have cited them as key influences in modern comedy. The duo continued to sporadically reunite after 1961. In the early 1960s they appeared several times on NBC's The Jack Paar Program. The duo reunited in 1972 at New York's Madison Square Garden for the all-star "Together For McGovern" rally for Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign. They also took the stage at President Jimmy Carter's 1977 inaugural gala. They appeared together in a 1980 stage revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in New Haven, Connecticut. May also wrote the screenplays to The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998), which Nichols directed. In 1996, the PBS series American Masters aired Nichols and May: Take Two, an hour long documentary about the duo.