Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius

The Publisher Says: Miss May Does Not Exist, by Carrie Courogen, is the riveting biography of comedian, director, actor and writer Elaine May, one of America’s greatest comic geniuses. May began her career as one-half of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, the duo that revolutionized the comedy sketch.

After performing their Broadway smash An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Elaine set out on her own. She toiled unsuccessfully on Broadway for a while, but then headed to Hollywood where she became the director of A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Mikey and Nicky, and the legendary Ishtar. She was hired as a script doctor on countless films like Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Tootsie, and The Birdcage. In 2019, she show more returned to Broadway where she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in The Waverly Gallery. Besides her considerable talent, May is well known for her reclusiveness. On one of the albums she made with Mike Nichols, her bio is “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 the way women were mistreated and held back in Hollywood. 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 often punished for those things, despite revolutionizing the way we think about comedy, acting, and what a film or play can be.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A biography of a living person, one famously Private and Reclusive, faces an uphill battle when that person declines to participate in the project. The issues become apparent early. I felt put off by one tic the author has: Referring to her subject as "Elaine" seemingly in an attempt to give a spurious sense of her own intimacy with the steadfastly unavailable Miss May.

This is really a minor stylistic issue in most cases of biography. When Miss May simply won't show up...apparently a habit of hers, as the author rather disconcertingly learns via stalking the woman...it looms large because there is nothing of a personal connection in the biographer's tale. This is a very well-researched and capably written dissection of a classic parasocial relationship. Miss May is a public figure as an actress of stage and screen fame. The ways in which the author collects information about her subject are available to other members of the public. Miss May therefore maintains control of the master narrative available to the author, as to the rest of the world. The amount of research required to write this book is, as it must be to make any kind of a story, deep. The border between that depth and stalking is blurry in all cases. I was, however, pushed into "really? Ew!" territory when the author used her own artist connections to find out when and where her subject would be attending public events and getting herself invited to them.

My own personal line was crossed when I read that. I saw the project in a very different light afterwards.

How the heck do you tell The Truth about someone who so values her privacy that she will invent stuff for public dissemination, decline to interact with people in any unmediated fashion, and simply not show up at invitation-only public events? This is someone who doesn't want people rummaging in her drawers. I expect that, like those Victorian folks who directed that their records be burned after their deaths, we will discover that this level of erasure is Miss May's wish as well. So the public record as ably collated and presumptiously contextualized (possibly inaccurately and unfairly, I doubt we will ever be allowed to know) by the author might very well be the only formal record of the long and excellent career of an unfairly overlooked and undervalued creative force.

That will, I expect, have to do. The work she did will speak for itself in the long run; absent a change of heart or a sudden betrayal of Miss May, here is a record of the truth she wanted the audience to know. Fellow pedants please note the citation style is inconsistent and incompletely explanatory. show less

Courogen attempts a biography of Elaine May, and the problem with the book is summed up in the title, which comes from the first comedy album released by May and Mike Nichols in the late 1950s. Her biographical statement for the album's liner notes was "Miss May does not exist." Because she has been a fiercely private woman throughout her career, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances, there really isn't much to know about May beyond the work itself. And as hard as Courogen has tried, interviewing dozens of May's friends and collaborators, she hasn't been able to get past that obstacle.

Even more than most celebrity biographies, this one is reduced to a hopscotch of "and then she wrote (directed, starred in)...". To be show more sure, May's career is a dazzling one: overnight stardom as part of the Nichols & May comedy team; the first woman since Ida Lupino to direct a Hollywood studio film; several years as the industry's go-to script fixer/ghostwriter; and in 2018, a Tony Award when she returned to Broadway for the first time in 60 years. She is a gifted actress and a stunning writer, and while her improvisational style and perfectionism made her less well-suited to film directing -- she usually ran well over budget and over schedule -- there is a loyal audience for her films, which have grown in reputation over the years.

Courogen does a fine job of surveying that career, but one wants a bit more personal insight from a biography than she is able to offer, and there isn't much of that here. May has chosen to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible. It becomes something of a running joke that when she reluctantly agrees to talk to the press for a piece on an upcoming play or movie, she tells the reporter "I'd prefer it if you could keep my name out of your article."

One of Courogen's recurring themes is that May has been punished more harshly by Hollywood for her failures than male writers or directors would have been. She's not entirely wrong; lord knows that a lot of male directors have been given second (and third, and fourth...) chances after a flop in a way that May didn't get after Ishtar.

But you can't blame that entirely on sexism. It's not hard to understand why studios were reluctant to work with May again after Paramount's experience making Mikey and Nicky. The movie went 30% over budget; May shot three times as much footage as was made for Gone With the Wind; and when the film still wasn't finished more than a year after her deadline, Paramount had to take May to court to get her to turn over several reels of film that she had hidden in order to keep the studio from completing the movie without her. Two things can both be true: The phrase "a difficult woman" is often used to keep women from asserting themselves in the way that men are expected to; and Elaine May was, as a director, a difficult woman.

The background sexism that pervades May's career is, sadly, carried on in Courogen's own writing. She refers to her subject as "Elaine" throughout, which I thought felt disrespectful and diminishing. It's hard to imagine that she'd have consistently referred to "Alfred" if she'd been writing a biography of Hitchcock.

I had hoped that this book would be a suitable companion for Mark Harris's superb biography of Mike Nichols, and it's not. It's a fine overview of her career, and that gives it some value. But a biography it's not, and there was no way it ever could be. The material that would have been needed to write that book, like Miss May herself, does not exist. show less

The biography Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius by Carrie Courogen shows Carrie's undying appreciation for the work of Miss May.

I know you're asking yourself "Who in the world is Miss May?" and you wouldn't be the only one. Before reading this biography, I had never heard of Elaine May, but when I saw this offered by St. Martin's Press and read the description, I was interested in finding out. Being a movie and TV lover, I am fascinated by those in the Hollywood industry, and this biography reads like a novel, I could hardly wait to pick it back up again. There were a couple of sections where it kind of lagged, but Elaine's career had times where it lagged, so that seemed show more appropriate.

From Elaine's time on-stage as the undisputed Queen of Improv and her partnership with Mike Nichols, to her time directing, and being the go-to script doctor for anyone having script issues, May had a very long career...out of the spotlight. To her credit, movies and TV wouldn't be the same if Elaine May hadn't made her way from stage to movies and back to the stage. Nichols and May were highly sought after in the era of Jack Parr, and their on-stage improv sketches (written mostly by Elaine) paved the way for comedians and Saturday Night Live.

She was a prolific writer during her entire career, and even though industry people would come to her to fix their scripts, being a perfectionist she could never fix her own. You wouldn't know it, but she had a hand in some of the most popular and well-loved movies of all time. Ever heard of Labyrinth? Tootsie? Dangerous Minds? She put her stamp on those scripts to create what we know today.

During her enduring career, she worked with some of the best actors in the business. She gave Charles Grodin his start on-stage. Marlo Thomas was her best friend. She worked with Peter Falk and Dustin Hoffman; teamed up multiple times with Warren Beatty. She was well-loved but was also very hard to work for. One of the first female directors, her need for the perfect take made things go way over schedule and made for long days.

Towards the end of her career, she had a hand in The Birdcage (the first major movie to feature a gay couple) and Primary Colors. But you probably won't find her name attached to most things she worked on because she didn't want credit for a lot of it. Because of the highs and very lows of her career, she didn't like being in the spotlight. Critics were extremely harsh towards her once Nichols and May broke up their act, and she wanted to fly under the radar. The title of this book comes from a biography on a Nichols and May album where she wrote "Miss May Does Not Exist." And for the most part, she doesn't.

All in all, this is a love story to the greatness that is Elaine May. I don't read a lot of non-fiction, and I'm glad I chose this one. Elaine was such a fascinating woman, from being a genius ahead of her time to changing the comedy landscape, her contribution to Hollywood and the stage should be known...even if she doesn't want to and doesn't exist.

Thank you to @StMartinsPress and @NetGalley for both a digital review copy and physical copy for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own. show less

I wish I could say I liked this book, but I didn't. Th author has written a love letter to a woman she's obsessed with and actually stalked. Yes Elaine May was a genius but she was a horrible human being. To call her lifestyle bohemian is being kind. She was a self-absorbed unorganized rude mess. She was self-centered enough to walk out on her child in order to fulfill herself & her dream. Her body of work, except Ishtar, is incredible and her success a miracle. The author never made contact nor interview Elaine so what we have is a textbook sprinkled with tidbits from acquaintances. It didn't take long for me to realize that my dislike of Elaine as a person was tarnishing my appreciation of her body of work.

I voluntarily read and show more reviewed an advance reader copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#MissMayDoesNotExist #CarrieCourogen #Netgalley #St.Martin'sPress show less