Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life & Work of Elaine May, the Hidden Genius of Hollywood by Carrie Courogen

The remarkable life of the elusive Elaine May in a new, crackling biography. 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.As part of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, May revolutionized sketch comedy before striking out on her own to make history as the third woman to be admitted into the Directors Guild of America when she wrote, directed, and starred in 1971’s A New Leaf. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, May was one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters and script doctors—on films like Heaven Can Wait, Reds, and Tootsie—and one of the only women directing within the studio system, with films like The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey and Nicky. After the legendary box office bomb Ishtar, May never directed a feature again, though she continued to write films like The Birdcage and Primary Colors. In 2018, she returned to Broadway, where she won the Tony Award for Best