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Mike Nichols, the director who was one of a dozen people in entertainment to win an Oscar, an Emmy, Tonys and a Grammy, died Wednesday night of cardiac arrest. Nichols was married to Diane Sawyer of ABC and the announcement was made by James Goldston, president of ABC News in a message to the staff.
Team—
I am writing with the very sad news that Diane's husband, the incomparable Mike Nichols, passed away suddenly on Wednesday evening. He was 83.In a triumphant career that spanned over six decades, Mike created some of the most iconic works of American film, television and theater—an astonishing canon ranging from The Graduate, Working Girl, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff to Closer, Charlie Wilson’s War, Annie, Spamalot, The Birdcage, and Angels in America. He was a true visionary, winning the highest honors in the arts for his work as a director, writer, producer and comic and was one of a tiny few to win the EGOT—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
No one was more passionate about his craft than Mike. He had recently been immersed in a new project for HBO to adapt "Master Class," Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play about opera legend Maria Callas. The project reunited him with Meryl Streep, one of his most frequent collaborators. She once said of Mike, "no explanation of our world could be complete and no account or image of it so rich, if we didn't have you," in hailing him as one of the essential artists of our time.
One of the world's greatest playwrights, Tom Stoppard, said, "He is a giver. He’s good at comfort and joy. He’s good at improving the shining hour and brightening the dark one, and, of course, he’s superlative fun…To me he is the best of America.”
Mike had a sparkling wit and a brilliant mind. Beloved by so many in film, television and Broadway, there was no greater joy in his life than his family, and of course our own Diane Sawyer. A true and beautiful love story, Mike and Diane were married for 26 years. He leaves behind three children—Daisy, Max and Jenny—and four wonderful grandchildren.
I know many of you will want to share your condolences with Diane. The family will hold a small, private service this week, and a memorial will be held at a later date. Until then, please join me in keeping Diane, Mike's children, grandchildren and their families in your thoughts.
James
From the New York Times obit:
Dryly urbane, Mr. Nichols had a gift for communicating with actors and a keen comic timing, which he honed early in his career as half of the popular sketch-comedy team Nichols and May. In films like “The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Carnal Knowledge” and in comedies and dramas on stage, he accomplished what Orson Welles and Elia Kazan but few if any other directors have: achieving popular and artistic success in both film and theater. He was among the most decorated people in the history of show business, one of only a dozen or so to have won an Oscar, a Tony, an Emmy and a Grammy.
His career encompassed an entire era of screen and stage entertainment. On Broadway, where he won an astonishing nine Tonys (including two as a producer), he once had four shows running simultaneously. He directed Neil Simon’s early comedies “Barefoot in the Park” and “The Odd Couple” in the 1960s, the zany Monty Python musical, “Spamalot,” four decades later, and nearly another decade after that, an acclaimed revival of Arthur Miller’s bruising masterpiece, “Death of a Salesman”…Between 1970 and 2000 his work included revivals of classics like Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and “The Little Foxes” by Lillian Hellman; astringent dramas tied to world affairs like “Streamers,” David Rabe’s tale of soldiers preparing to be shipped out to Vietnam, and Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden,” about the revenge of a former political prisoner; incisive social commentaries including “The Real Thing” by Tom Stoppard and “Comedians” by Trevor Griffiths; and comedies by turns acid (Mr. Rabe’s “Hurlyburly”), sentimental (“The Gin Game” by D. L. Coburn), dark (Mr. Simon’s “Prisoner of Second Avenue”) and light (Mr. Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” a tripartite work that goes from melancholy to loopy to slapstick).
In 1984, as a producer, he brought a talented monologuist to Broadway, supervising the one-woman show — it was called, simply, “Whoopi Goldberg” — that propelled her to fame. Alone or with the company he founded, Icarus Productions, he produced a number of well-known shows, including the musical “Annie,” from which he earned a fortune (and a Tony), “The Real Thing” (another Tony) and Jules Feiffer’s play “Grown Ups.”
The first time Mr. Nichols stepped behind the camera, in 1966, it was to direct Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in an adaptation of Edward Albee’s scabrous stage portrayal of a marriage, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The film was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including one for best director. Though he didn’t win, the film won five.
Mr. Nichols did win an Oscar for his second film, “The Graduate” (1967), a shrewd social comedy that defined the uncertainty of adulthood for the generation that came of age in the 1960s. The film made a star of an unknown actor, Dustin Hoffman, who was nearly 30 when he played Benjamin Braddock, the 21-year-old protagonist of the film, a Southern Californian and a track star who sleeps with the wife of his father’s best friend and then falls in love with her daughter. A small, dark, Jewish New York stage actor (though he was born and raised in Los Angeles), he was an odd choice for the all-American suburban boy whose seemingly prescribed life path has gone awry.
Nichols was nominated for five best director Oscars in all. Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner and others had helped to launch the Second City Improv company. May gives the tribute to Nichols at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003:
