Miss May Does Not Exist

The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius

By: Carrie Courogen

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

As part of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, May revolutionized sketch comedy before striking out on her own to make history as the third woman to be admitted into the Directors Guild of America when she wrote, directed, and starred in 1971’s A New Leaf.

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, May was one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters and script doctors and one of the only women directing within the studio system. After a box-office bomb, May never directed a feature again, though she continued to write films.

In 2018, she returned to Broadway, where she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play for The Waverly Gallery. Besides her considerable talent, May is well known for her reclusiveness, often working behind the scenes without credit. In the liner notes for her first comedy LP with Mike Nichols in 1958, her bio is a single terse sentence: “Miss May does not exist.” Until now.

Carrie Courogen has uncovered the Elaine May who does exist. Conducting countless interviews, she has filled in the blanks May has forcibly kept blank for years, creating a fascinating portrait of a creative powerhouse, a lost era of Hollywood, and the way women were mistreated and held back within it.

Miss May Does Not Exist is a remarkable love story about a prickly genius who was never easy to work with, not always easy to love, and frequently punished for those things, despite revolutionizing the way we think about comedy, acting, and what a film or play can be.

©2024 Carrie Courogen (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

A Rose-Colored Apologia for Elaine May

There is no question Elaine May is a gifted, briliiant writer born with a sense of story denied to other mere mortals. Equally, she is a talented performer and actress. Her contribution to improvisation is seminal. She was, at times, a great theater director. She can't direct movies worth a lick.

And therein lies the problem with this book. It takes no critical eye. Worse, the author cannot get the stars out of her eyes. Everything Elaine May does is great. If it isn't great--Ishtar, for example--the author raises a rousing defense that the cost of a movie and/or its commercial success should not be barometer of a film's value or success. That precious few of the movies--if any--that Elaine May directed enjoyed either needs to be looked at objectively, not pollyanna-ish as the author does here. By failing any semblence of objectivity (apparently May can do no wrong), she undercuts the creative force May was in so many other areas.

Even May's well-known and maybe well deserved reputation as a script doctor needs more scrutiny. Many of her script-doctored scripts were movies directed by Mike Nichols. It does May no disservice that she worked better as a team with Nichols than she did independently (which is blatently obvious to even the most casual observer), but the author doesn't touch that. If she had, it would mean conceding that May wasn't flawlessly brilliant constantly.

In retrospect, the influence Elaine May had on entertainment, television, the theater, and Hollywood is unquestionable. Maybe another book will be written with a more cooler assessment--which will give Elaine May the true credit she richly deserves.

It would sure make this book better.

Very good

For a long time I have wanted to know about the life of Elaine May. This book provided a lot of insight. She sounds like an amazing woman!

Interesting

Slow in the beginning but became very interesting as it went on. I remember her and the repartee.

Miss May indeed exists

Fascinating biography of a woman who beat the system but didn’t want anything to do with it - Hollywood and Broadway. Excellent listen.

Fascinating talent

Loved the balance of Ms. May’s successes and struggles and the fact that she never compromised her talents. An extraordinary life brought to a grateful world.