Gay Today: Entertainment

Mike Nichols: Entertainment's Achiever

By Jack Nichols

I'd always thought I'd shared something special with Mike Nichols—our family name—until I discovered he'd been born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin. It didn't matter. I loved him like a brother even so.

While Tom Lehrer's comedy albums were the college youth-discs of the 50s, it was Mike Nichols and his good friend, a wonderfully quaint actress, Elaine May, who, in my book, did best in early 60s comedy. Their skits helped satisfy my early 20's cravings for iconoclastic tirades.

The sky-high cost of funerals was one of their first targets. A telephone skit, showcased Mike as a homebody with a corpse on his hands and Elaine as a funeral planner trying to get together with him on prices. As the tab went high, Elaine asked, "How do you plan to transport the body?"

"By taxi," Mike drolly replies.

In another skit Mike is stranded in the boonies with no change in his pocket begging an unsympathetic telephone operator to place a call for him. "Please, operator, can I speak to a human?" he pleads.

Previous Entertainment Articles from the GayToday Archive:
Reviw: Bathhouse Betty

Review: Taming the Tiger

Review: The Rainbow Room

Related Sites:
New Actors Workshop
GayToday does not endorse related sites.

In a clipped, computerized pitch, Elaine asks, "You wish to speak to a hu-man?"

I was saddened when the comedic duo parted ways, though much later they were back working together again, enchantingly making fun of humanity's sorer spots. Mike's wife, Diane Sawyer, tells how—at supper—she listened while Elaine asked her husband, "You know what bothers me about God?"

Mike answered without any hesitation: "That he hates arrogance so much but doesn't seem to mind cruelty."

"Exactly," sighed Elaine.

On Monday—May 3—Mike Nichols is slated to receive an annual lifetime achievement award to be presented by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. I, for one, will applaud endlessly from afar.

Elizabeth Taylor won the Best Actress Oscar in 1966 for her role in Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

I'll never forget Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which he directed in 1966. In the timeframe, properized citizens hardly knew what to make of this brilliant black comedy. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, then a husband and wife team, gave it their best.

But my favorite moment in Woolf was due to Nichols' careful staging of a curious but reserved expression expertly and silently delivered by Sandy Dennis watching worriedly from the corner of her eye while her philandering husband fondled Liz's knee.

And, speaking of iconoclasm, Mike was bold enough to use Christianity's most sacred symbol to prevent a marriage in the final scene of another film he directed, The Graduate. Dustin Hoffman rushes from the church, barricading the doors by placing a cross in their exterior handles.

Carnal Knowledge, another Nichols hit, showed how expertly he understood male role-conditioning. The bumbling characters—including my other 'wanna-be relative', Jack Nicholson (my son?)—are still au currant after a quarter century's passing.

And in case you're not a Cher fan, rent Mike's masterful Silkwood and watch that glamour-puss act. At the same time, you'll note, Nichols concern about the evils of the technocracy sings. That's what I like: a talented comedian armed with a real social conscience.

The Birdcage is one of Mike Nichols' recent hits

How did Nichols' career get it's start? What was it that turned Michael Igor Peschkowsky into a wonderfully zany seer? From my standpoint, the answer is simple: he was an outsider—arriving as a child from Berlin-- looking in at American culture, trying to figure out what made his adopted country tick. "Would some power the gift to give us—to see ourselves as others see us?" asked the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. Mike Nichols had that gift, that power, the ability of an insider to see his new land from outside its cultural border.

The shot from Mike Nichols' The Graduate

It tickled me when Mike won an Oscar for The Graduate. It delights me even more now that he's about to be rewarded again, at age 67, for providing us with non-stop top quality entertainment. Charlie Chaplin was the first to win the very award he's now receiving.

Before she reunited with Mike Nichols, Elaine May told an audience what she liked about him:

I love Michael because when we split up, he always sent me a little money every month, and it made a big difference. Recently, I've been able to make a little money on my own by having sex with some of the guys in my building. Nothing big. But just enough to get back my self-respect.