Elaine May Net Worth

Elaine May's Quotes

• What is important in life and art? You know, when I was very young, I thought it didn't matter what happened to me when I died so long as my work was immortal. As I age, I think, Well, perhaps if I had to trade dying right now and being immortal was just living on, I would choose living on.
• I'm a pariah at dinner parties because I don't get all this about Lincoln. It's not like he wanted to free the slaves right away. And all that death. Why didn't we just stop buying cotton?
• If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman.

Interesting Facts about Elaine May

1. Mother of Jeannie Berlin.
2. She and Mike Nichols were referred to as "the world's fastest humans".
3. Partnered with Mike Nichols for a number of years until their less than amicable split. They made up years later and wrote the movie The Birdcage (1996).
4. She married as a teenager and had a daughter (Jeannie Berlin, born in 1949) before she turned 18 years old.
5. So brief was her 70s marriage to lyricist Sheldon Harnick of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) fame, the joke went that Elaine got custody of the cake.
6. Has not directed a movie since the colossal box office failure of Ishtar (1987).
7. Her play, "Hot Line", was nominated for a 1983 Joseph Jefferson Award for "New Work" at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
8. Was married to her psychoanalyst, Dr. David L. Rubinfine for 18 years until his death in 1982.
9. Was awarded a National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama on July 10, 2013, along with Tony Kushner, George Lucas and seven others.
10. Directed two Oscar nominated performances: Eddie Albert and Jeannie Berlin in The Heartbreak Kid (1972).
11. One of only three women to have won the Razzie Award for Worst Director. (The other two being Jennifer Lynch for Boxing Helena (1993) and Elizabeth Banks, who was one of several directors of Movie 43 (2013). May, who won for Ishtar (1987), actually tied the award with Norman Mailer for Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987).
12. She is of Russian Jewish descent.
13. Did major uncredited rewrites at Dustin Hoffman's request during production on Tootsie (1982).
14. Was an uncredited script doctor on Dangerous Minds (1995).
15. Was an uncredited script doctor on Labyrinth (1986).
16. Did major uncredited rewrites during production on Reds (1981) and also was a major creative voice in post-production for Warren Beatty.
17. Was an uncredited script doctor on Wolf (1994).
18. Is said to have worked as an uncredited script doctor for Warren Beatty on Dick Tracy (1990).
19. After working together on Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981), Warren Beatty commissioned Elaine to help him develop and write a biopic of Howard Hughes. May's script was one of several that Beatty developed over the years, along with Howard Hughes scripts by Bo Goldman and Robert Towne, among others. It is uncertain if any of May's original work has made its way into the upcoming Warren Beatty Howard Hughes project Rules Don't Apply (2016).
20. Wrote an unused treatment for the Paramount story idea Runaway Bride (1999), during the early 1990's. The idea for the movie was originally conceived in the late 1980's by Paramount executives, who hired screenwriters Josann McGibbon & Sara Parriott to flesh out the story and write the script. Their script was completed in 1989 and was in development for 9 years. During that time, Paramount hired Elaine May to write a new treatment for the story, but her treatment was tossed out, along with another by screenwriter Leslie Dixon. However, by 1998 Paramount went back to the original draft by McGibbon & Parriott and landed Julia Roberts, Richard Gere and Garry Marshall.