Director Mike Nichols mourned

Director and writer Mike Nichols, who was one of only 17 individuals to receive the designation of EGOT, a term for winners of the top American awards for artistic achievement on TV, on record, in film and on Broadway (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), died yesterday, November 19, of cardiac arrest. He was 83.

Nichols, whom locals remember from a series of Jax Beer commercials, started his career as a comedian with partner Elaine May. He was a highly driven and legendary director of Broadway first-run plays and, later, one of the film industry’s most highly regarded directors and script writers.

Elaine May and Mike Nichols, comedy pioneers in 1960. (Photo via Wikimedia)

After moving from writing for comedy on records and receiving a 1961 Grammy for “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May,” Nichols began to write and direct plays such as the award winning production of “Barefoot in the Park” with Robert Redford, which won him his first Tony Award in 1964. Over his lifetime, he received a total of nine Tony Awards, his most recent in 2012 for his direction of “Death of a Salesman” starring James Earl Jones. Other noted Tonys were for “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and Neil Simon favorites “Luv” and”The Odd Couple,” which were nominated together, and “Plaza Suite.”

Nichols also received two Tonys as producer for the musical “Annie” in 1977 and the play “The Real Thing” in 1984.

Nichols’ foray into film started with his direction of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” followed by one of his most appealing movies, “The Graduate,” which starred Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft and won him his Oscar in 1967.

Nichols scored with other hits from the psychological drama “Silkwood” with Meryl Streep and Cher to the ridiculous comedy “The Bird Cage” starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, a remake of the French film “La Cage au Folles.” Nichols’ work behind the camera earned him the respect of other directors including some shots still kept secret as in one scene he shot in “Primary Colors.”  Both “The Bird Cage” and “Primary Colors” were written by his former comedy partner May.

Nichols received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 2010.

In achievements for television, Nichols received four Emmy Awards – two each –  for his two TV specials “Wit” in 2001 and “Angels in America” in 2004.

Director Mike Nichols. (Photo courtesy NPR.org)

He was born Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky in Vienna, Austria to a formerly wealthy Russian-Jewish immigrant family, who had fled Siberia after the Russian Revolution. His mother’s family were German Jews and he was related (third cousin twice removed) to physicist Albert Einstein through his mother.

In the months leading up to Kristallnacht, both seven-year-0ld Michael and his three-year-old brother Robert were sent to America to meet with their father, who had fled the oppression of the Nazis.  The family was reunited a year later after Nichols’ mother escaped through Italy and they settled in New York City. At that time, their father changed his family name to Nichols and he began a medical practice in Manhattan. 

Mike Nichols became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1944 and attended both public and private school before briefly attending New York University. He later transferred to the University of Chicago, enrolling as a pre-medical student. But his fortunes were never meant to find much success in science such as his famed cousin. Nichols got the acting bug from attending class and it was there that he met May, who had supposedly criticized his acting skills. 

The two of them became close friends, but Nichols left Chicago in 1954 to travel back to New York, where he was accepted as a student at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. He began work in improvisational theatre and comedy and later traveled back to Chicago after he was accepted as a member of the Compass Players. This led to his working again with May and the rest became comedy history.

Nichols is survived by his fourth wife former ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer, whom he married in 1988, and three children from two of his previous marriages.