Cinema: Some are More Yossarian than Others

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absorb the world.

One month after his arrival, Mike's accent fell away like hand-me-down overalls. His father, a doctor, died when the boy was twelve. There was hardly any cash; the brilliant, aggressive student subsisted on scholarships and formed a lasting grudge against the unfeeling. To this day he remembers learning in terms of combat. "In grammar school you fight for your life and try not to get the crap beat out of you after school," he recalls. "In high school you figure things are frozen forever in a certain pattern; there are a couple of guys you can beat up and a lot who can beat you up, and there are a few girls who'll go out with you and some more that won't, and that's the way the rest of life will be. Then you get to college, and things seem to be a little more open." A little, but not enough. Faced with this anatomy of melancholy, he opted for heavy anesthetic. He slept 16 and 18 hours a day.

Rinse Out, Please

In 1949, at the University of Chicago, like many another converted introvert, he woke up to performing. Wit is far more often a shield than a lance; " Mike set up a complex of defenses that (TM) made him the fastest tongue in the Midwest. The second fastest was a hostile = chick named Elaine May. It was love I at first fight. "Elaine held me like an autistic child," Nichols remembers. The child bride he had taken at 19 was cast off. Elaine became a surrogate, although, says Mike, "it was much too serious for marriage." And much too funny not to play it for audiences.

They began playing together in 1954, and by 1957 had improvised their way into national prominence as the mockingbirds of the American aviary. When they were around, no peacock, no eagle was secure. In their Broadway show, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, they did scenes in the style of O'Neill, and Batman, Proust, Pirandello and Noel Coward. Each swatch of material had a shiny button—as when Nichols, playing an English dentist, leans over his beloved patient: "I knew even then that I loved you. There, I've said it. I do love you. Let's not talk about it for a moment. Rinse out, please."

Their rise was based on more than matched metabolism and high literacy. Their stagecraft was impeccable. Elaine had been a child actress; before Nichols & May were joined with an ampersand, he had taken classes with Lee Strasberg. The guru of the Actors Studio had helped Mike along financially simply because he was overwhelmed by the kid's "earnestness and directness."

Saint Subber's Stomach

Richard Burton remembers meeting Nichols and May backstage when he was starring in Camelot. "Elaine was too formidable . . . one of the most intelligent, beautiful and witty women I had ever met. I hoped I would never see her again." Mike was less formidable, more agreeable. The mustard-colored eyes glinted, but the face had an unlined, almost feminine softness. The voice was as warm and resonant as a cello. Burton, who knows role playing when he sees it, was at first unconvinced by the proffered friendship and admiration. But eventually he enrolled Nichols in the Richard Burton fan club; it was an attachment that would one day pay off handsomely for Nichols.

Making up the act was a mutual idea; breaking it up in 1961 was Elaine's. Closing