Miss May Does Not Exist

Starred review from April 1, 2024

Known for being highly intelligent and often prickly, Elaine May proved herself a multifaceted talent as she transitioned from comedian to writer/director/actor and sought-after script doctor. Working tirelessly for most of the last 70 years, May (born in 1932) has remained an enigmatic figure whose work has often gone uncredited. She has always valued her privacy and reportedly has a penchant for half-truths and humorous exaggerations, but writer/editor/director Courogen skillfully takes on the challenge of discovering the woman behind the legend. She found that May, a single mother at 18, asked her own character-inspiring mother to raise May's daughter while May partnered with Mike Nichols to revolutionize stand-up comedy and improvisation. She dabbled in acting and directing, most notably helming The Heartbreak Kid and Ishtar, which received advance reviews that sunk the film and created May's lifelong distrust of the press. On the other hand, her work saved numerous films, including Tootsie and Primary Colors, and her role in the Broadway revival of The Waverly Gallery led to a Best Actress Tony win in 2019 when she was in her late eighties. VERDICT The writing in this book is whip-smart and funny. It produces a fully realized portrait of a mysterious film genius.--Lisa Henry

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 29, 2024
Journalist Courogen (Go All the Way) delivers a vibrant biography of filmmaker Elaine May. Born in 1932, May rose to prominence with the improv comedy act she developed with Mike Nichols. The duo became an overnight sensation after a 1958 television appearance, but May quit three years later, fearing the act had grown stale. She hadn’t planned on becoming a director, but was effectively forced to by Paramount after the studio only agreed to finance her first film, A New Leaf, which she wrote and was set to star in, on the condition that she direct so the studio could save money by paying her less than a male director. Depicting May as an auteur obsessed with creative control, Courogen describes how she allegedly hid film reels of the in-progress Mikey and Nicky to prevent studio interference. Courogen traces this tension between commercial concerns and May’s uncompromising artistry through her major successes (she received acclaim for writing Heaven Can Wait and The Birdcage), as well as her infamous directorial bomb, Ishtar, and captures her larger-than-life spirit in lithe prose: “Elaine was a world-wise woman among children, with a mind that seemed to run only at high speed, a cruel wit that could be weaponized at a moment’s notice, and an intimidating raw and unbalanced intelligence.” This is a gem. Agent: Nicki Richesin, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary.

May 15, 2024
A biography of an iconic entertainer. Courogen makes an engaging book debut with an appreciative biography of comedian, director, playwright, and actor Elaine May (b. 1932), as famous for her prickly personality as for her brilliant, sardonic wit. Drawing on abundant published material and interviews, the author chronicles May's roller-coaster career. The daughter of peripatetic entertainers, by the time she was 10, she had been enrolled in more than 50 schools. She left school for good when she was 14, married when she was 16, and by the next year had a baby. Leaving her daughter with her mother, in 1952, she hitchhiked to Chicago, where she met Mike Nichols. "Mike and Elaine," Courogen writes, "found their possibilities in a shared interest in people's pretentious natures (including their own), a mutual fascination with betrayal, and above all else, an unending love for language." The two created a nightclub act that catapulted them to fame on TV and Broadway, as well as "a blur of nonstop gigs." But in 1961, Elaine, bored and restless, quit. While Nichols went on to become an award-winning director, May's career sank for years before it revived. Courogen recounts in detail her reincarnation as a director, actor, and, notably, script doctor, "someone who could make your project better, often at the eleventh hour." By the mid-1980s, "she had gone from someone who was practically unhireable to someone who was not only constantly booked and busy, but able to turn down work left and right, agreeing only to scripts she found truly interesting or exciting." Though Courogen thoroughly documents May's career, her inner life remains elusive; as someone who knew May commented, she's "wickedly smart, wickedly funny, wickedly clever. But you could never get to the center of her." A sympathetic yet somewhat incomplete portrayal of a unique talent.

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June 1, 2024
Now in her nineties, comedian Elaine May is still best remembered for her brilliant improvisations with Mike Nichols, a performance art form she helped start. But while Nichols went on to cinematic glory as a director who won all the major awards (he's an EGOT), May, as the title references, tended to disappear. She directed four films, including the much-maligned Ishtar, and she was an occasional actress and an in-demand script doctor, though she often refused credit. Courogen makes the point--repeatedly--that May was always the smartest, most talented person in the room. But she was also obsessive compulsive, unable to let go of a work, touchy, and reclusive. Hollywood sexism hindered her career as well. The research here is impeccable, but no real intimates, and certainly not May, agreed to interviews. Consequently, Courogen presents primarily a career biography with large dollops of the intense relationship between Nichols and May scattered throughout. Still, this is a captivating look at an influential, one-of-a-kind talent in the performing arts pantheon whom comedy, theater, and film fans should know about.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.