Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer: "Have You Heard My Message?" weaves the story of a man and a movement into this powerful biography that captures the wisdom and passion of Jack Nichols. A compelling look at this prolific activist, inspirational human being, and warrior for gay equality.

In the late 1950s, Mike Nichols (1931–2014) and Elaine May (b. 1932) soared to superstar status as a sketch comedy duo in live shows and television. After their 1962 breakup, both went on to long and distinguished careers in other areas of show business—mostly separately, but sporadically together again. In Nichols and May: Interviews, twenty-seven interviews and profiles ranging over more than five decades tell their stories in their own words. Nichols quickly became an A-list stage and film director, while May, like many women in her field, often found herself thwarted in her attempts to make her distinctive voice heard in projects she could control herself. Yet, in recent years, Nichols’s work as a filmmaker has been perhaps unfairly devalued, while May’s accomplishments, particularly as a screenwriter and director, have become more appreciated, leading to her present widespread acceptance as a groundbreaking female artist and a creative genius of and for our time. Nichols gave numerous interviews during his career, and editor Robert E. Kapsis culled hundreds of potential selections to include in this volume the most revealing and those that focus on his filmmaking career. May, however, was a reluctant interview subject at best. She often subverted the whole interview process, producing instead a hilarious parody or even a comedy sketch—with or without the cooperation of the sometimes-oblivious interviewer. With its contrasting selection of interviews conventional and oddball, this volume is an important contribution to the study of the careers of Nichols and May.

With iconic movies like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and Carnal Knowledge, Mike Nichols was the most prominent American director during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. Mike Nichols: Sex, Language, and the Reinvention of Psychological Realism argues that he overhauled the style of psychological realism, and, in doing so, continues to shape the legacies of Hollywood cinema. It also reveals that misreadings of his films were central to foundational debates at the emergence of Cinema Studies as a discipline, inviting new reflections on critical dogma. Focusing on Nichols' classic movies, as well as later films such as Silkwood, The Birdcage, and Angels in America, Kyle Stevens demonstrates that Nichols' realism lies not in the plausibility of his characters but in their inherent mystery. By attending to the puzzling words and silences, breaths and laughter, that comprise these characters, Stevens uncovers new insights into the subversive potential of a range of cinematic elements, and reveals how Nichols' satirical oeuvre, and Hollywood itself, participated in several of the nation's most urgent social, political, and philosophical advances.

A National Book Critics Circle finalist • One of People's top 10 books of 2021 • An instant New York Times bestseller • Named a best book of the year by NPR and Time A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges—some of the worst largely unknown until now—by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.

Mike Nichols burst onto the American cultural scene in the late 1950s as one half of the comic cabaret team of Nichols and May. He became a Broadway directing sensation, then moved on to Hollywood, where his first two films--Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967)--earned a total of 20 Academy Award nominations. Nichols won the 1968 Oscar for Best Director and later joined the rarefied EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) club. He made many other American cinematic classics, including Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Silkwood (1983), Working Girl (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), and his late masterpieces for HBO, Wit (2001) and Angels in America (2003). Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh regard him with reverence. This first full-career retrospective study of this protean force in the American arts begins with the roots of his filmmaking in satirical comedy and Broadway theatre and devotes separate chapters to each of his 20 feature films. Nichols' permanent achievements are his critique of the ways in which culture constructs conformity and his tempered optimism about individuals' liberation by transformative awakening.

"We are not short of good playwrights in Britain, but I know of none with Nichols' power to put modern Britain on the stage and send the spectators away feeling more like members of the human race" (Irving Wardle, The Times). Among Nichols' most important plays are A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, The National Health and Forget-me-Not Lane. Writers-Files is an important series documenting the work of major dramatists of the last hundred years. Each volume contains a comprehensive checklist of all the writer's plays, with a detailed performance history, excerpted reviews and a selection of the writers' own comments on their work. "Methuen are to be congratulated on launching this series...extremely useful to theatre professionals as well as to students and teachers of drama" (David Bradby, Speech and Drama)

Detailed genealogical information on the Briggs, Branch, Foster & McGlumphy families from England and Scotland with extensive facts about them since their arrival in America. Joseph Briggs settled mid 1700's on Block Island. Peter Branch arrived at Duxbury, MA in 1638. John Foster came to Salem, MA. in 1640. John McGlumphy was from Northern Ireland even though he was Scotish and settled in Washington County, PA. He arrived in America around 1780. Asa Nichols was born in Mass in 1765, The family having come from England. After a brief time in NY they put down roots in Battle Creek, MI. where they were one of the founders of Nichols-Shepard an early manufacturer of farm equipme

The first volume in this annotated collection of texts relating to the 'progresses' of Queen Elizabeth I around England includes accounts of dramatic performances, orations, and poems, and a wealth of supplementary material dating from 1533 to 1578.

CAPTAIN WILLIAM NICHOLS Captain Nichols was a naval war hero in the War of 1812. He has been seldom mentioned in history books. He was a bold and daring privateer sea captain from Newburyport, MA, who was known as a man to be feared by the British who faced him on the sea. His story needs to be brought out of the shadows of history. "During the War, he captured 28 British Prizes, although one-half of the time he was in prison earning for himself the name of 'The Holy Terror' wherever seamen gathered". H.W. Bartlett Upon his capture in the privateer Decatur, he was held in a cage constructed for him on the deck of a British frigate and deprived of communication with others for a month. He was then held in chains on a prison-ship in Chatham Harbor, England for a year and a half. President Madison ordered two British officers held in close confinement in the United States in response to Nichols' cruel and inhumane treatment. Nichols was eventually exchanged for the two officers and returned to the United States. Following his imprisonment, he continued his naval battles against the British, completing two successful cruises on the fast-sailing privateer Harpy by the end of the war. His story rivals the tales of swashbuckling pirates that have inspired the minds of the greatest fiction writers.