Mike Nichols

• Born: November 6, 1931
• Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
• Died: November 19, 2014

German-born theater and film director, writer, and comedian

Famous for directing such motion-picture classics as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967), as of 2014 Nichols was one of only twelve people to have won all four major entertainment awards: a Grammy Award, a Tony Award, an Emmy Award, and an Academy Award.

Early Life

Mike Nichols (NIHK-uhls) was born in Berlin, Germany, to Brigitte and Igor Peschkowsky, a physician. By the time Nichols was born, his family had a rich history of successful ancestors. His maternal grandfather, Gustav Landauer, was an important theorist in the field of anarchism in Germany and a strong supporter of the theory of communist anarchism. Landauer became the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, and he was executed in 1919 by fascist leaders for his beliefs. Landauer also worked as a translator, transcribing many of William Shakespeare’s works into German. Landauer’s wife and Nichols’s grandmother, Hedwig Lachmann, was an accomplished poet and author.

When the Nazi regime began persecuting Germany’s Jewish population, Nichols’s family started to plan their escape to the United States. His father left Germany, moved to New York City in 1938, and changed his name to Paul Nichols. Nichols and his three-year-old brother joined their father the following year, while Nichols’s mother was delayed by illness from making the trip until two years later.

Nichols’s father died of leukemia when Nichols was only twelve, and his mother soon remarried and moved to Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Nichols studied at schools in Connecticut and New York before enrolling at New York University after high school. His time studying there, however, did not last long: He dropped out after only one day.

After a year working as a stable hand, Nichols decided to pursue psychiatric studies at the University of Chicago, paying his way through school by working a succession of increasingly odd jobs, from being a janitor to judging jingle contests. After performing in theatrical productions at the university, however, he found his life’s work in the arts. It was while performing that he met fellow actor Elaine May, with whom he would later form a famous comedy team. Nichols traveled back and forth between New York and Chicago before joining a Chicago comedy team called the Compass Players, a group that was the precursor to the Second City players.

Life’s Work

Nichols’s work with the Compass Players helped propel him to great heights in the world of theater. When the team broke up, Nichols retained a successful comedy routine with May for a few years before starting to direct productions for Second City. While Nichols and May enjoyed much success as a comedy duo, they eventually parted to look for solo opportunities in 1961. However, the two would not stay apart forever. May later reconciled with Nichols, and he enlisted May’s help later to help him craft scripts for projects such as The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998).

It was his success as a director for the comedy group that got Nichols noticed by producer Arnold Saint-Subber, who asked Nichols to direct a Broadway stage production of Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park (1963), starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. The play was a hit, winning Nichols a Tony Award, the first in his string of wins, spanning from 1963 to 1965.

After his extremely successful run as a Broadway director, Nichols turned his talent to the big screen. His first picture, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), was released just one year after he left the Broadway stage. The Elizabeth Taylor-starring film won five Academy Awards and also let Nichols nab his first Academy Award nomination. He was not deprived of the golden statue for long—he soon won an Academy Award for best director for his work on The Graduate, released in 1967. In 1998, the American Film Institute placed the film at number seven on the list of the one hundred best American motion pictures of all time.

Nichols went on to work with many other stage productions, including Annie (1977) and Spamalot (2005). His work in film expanded to include Working Girl (1988), The Birdcage(1996), Closer (2004), and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), and many of those have garnered award nominations. He also developed close professional relationships with actors such as Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Jack Nicholson, with whom he worked on multiple films. In June 2012, Nichols received his sixth Tony Award for his direction of a revival of Death of a Salesman at the age of eighty.

Nichols was married four times. His fourth wife, whom he married in 1988, is Diane Sawyer, who served as the anchor of ABC World News, the nightly news program of the American Broadcasting Company, until September 2014. Nichols passed away in New York City, New York, on November 19, 2014, following a heart attack. He was eighty-three.

Significance

Even though Nichols spent much of his early life exploring different fields of study and other career paths, there is no question that he made an indelible mark in film and in theater. Nichols was one of a few entertainers to win all four of the major industry awards: an Emmy Award (for the 2003 television miniseries Angels in America), a Grammy Award (for the 1960 comedy album An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May), a Tony Award (for the 2005 Spamalot), and an Academy Award (for 1967’s The Graduate). The “Showbiz Award Grand Slam,” as it was christened by the Los Angeles Times, had been accomplished by only twelve people as of 2014. Nichols continued his involvement in the entertainment industry as a cofounder of and teacher at the New Actors Workshop in New York City.

Bibliography

Kashner, Sam. "Who's Afraid of Nichols and May?" Vanity Fair. Condé Nast, 31 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Dec. 2015.

Kenny, Glenn. “Mike Nichols’s Life in the Trenches.” Los Angeles Times 16 Dec. 2007: E31. Print.

Lahr, John. “Making It Real.” New Yorker 21 Feb. 2000. Print.

Tichler, Rosemarie, and Barry Jay Kaplan. Actors at Work. New York: Faber, 2007. Print.

Weber, Bruce. "Mike Nichols, Urbane Director Loved by Crowds and Critics, Dies at 83." New York Times. New York Times, 20 Nov. 2014. Web. 27 Dec. 2014.