62 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021
as a system of self-regulation. Although
it had been revised incrementally over
the years, it was still about ten years be-
hind educated taste. Foreign imports—
Bergman, Fellini, the French New Wave
directors, whose work was not subject to
Production Code review—had at least
the reputation of being racier and more
explicit. Imports were a very small per-
centage of the American box office, but
they were making Hollywood movies
look dumb by comparison.
Nichols’s entry was perfectly timed.
His first picture, the movie adaptation
of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf ?,” poked a big hole in
the already crumbling dike of the Code.
His second, “The Graduate,” hit the de-
mographic bull’s-eye.
Albee’s play features two middle-aged
semi-alcoholics, George and Martha
(he is an associate professor of history;
she is the daughter of the college’s pres-
ident), who pretend to have a son, and
who invite a much younger couple over
for drinks and serious head games. Why
would a major studio, Warner Bros.,
choose to have this dark “psychological”
melodrama directed by a man who had
made his name with Neil Simon com-
edies, and had never stood behind a
movie camera? (Indeed, Nichols had no
idea how cameras worked—not even
that you could use a long lens to shoot
closeups from a distance.)
His hiring was the result of Nich-
ols’s ability to establish friendships with
people who were generally suspicious
of offers of friendship—that is, celebri-
ties. When he and May were on Broad-
way, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews
were starring in “Camelot” in the ad-
joining theatre, and after his show Nich-
ols, who knew Andrews through her
husband, walked down the alley to hang
out in Burton’s dressing room. Burton
was more than a leading man. He was
well read, like Nichols, and he knew
theatre. They became friends.
Soon afterward, Burton went to
Rome to shoot “Cleopatra,” and he and
Taylor began their scandalous affair.
They were trailed by paparazzi, and when
Burton had to be away on another pic-
ture he asked Nichols to fly over and
take care of Taylor. Nichols arrived and
arranged a day trip to a place where she
wouldn’t be recognized, and they, too,
became close.
“Cleopatra” was one of the more spec-
tacular flops in movie history, mostly
because of extravagant production costs.
Twentieth Century Fox actually sued
Burton and Taylor for fifty million dol-
lars for conduct detrimental to the pic-
ture. But “Cleopatra” had made them
tabloid superstars, the Brangelina of
their day. Although they were clearly a
high-risk package, they were potentially
box-office gold. Studios just had to be
willing to roll the dice.
Harris says that Albee did not like
the idea of Nichols directing the adap-
tation. “My play is not a farce,” he com-plained. But, in exchange for a lot of
money for the rights, Albee had given
up casting and director approval. He
wanted Bette Davis for the female
lead; so did Jack Warner, and so did
Bette Davis, for whom the part might
practically have been written. Albee
thought that Taylor was too young—
she was thirty-three, and Martha is in
her fifties—but she was the actress the
producer wanted. She took the part af-
ter Burton (they were now married) told
her she must, to keep anyone else from
taking it. She had never seen, or even
read, the play.
Taylor told the producer that the
director she wanted was Nichols, who
had lobbied her for the job, and, after
the Hollywood veteran Fred Zinnemann
turned it down, Nichols was hired.
When Burton heard the news, he
signed on. Whatever else Nichols
brought to the project, from the stu-
dio’s point of view, he drastically re-
duced the risk factor.
Nichols said that he never again felt
as confident directing a movie. He be-
lieved that he understood the play.
When Buck Henry asked him what
“Virginia Woolf ” was about, he said,
“It’s about a man and a woman named
George and Martha who invite a young
couple over for drinks after a faculty
party. They drink and talk and argue
for ten to twelve hours, until you get to
know them.” For a play that offers nu-
merous invitations to allegorize—
George and Martha and their imagi-
nary child? Who might they be? Virginia
Woolf ... because she was possibly in-
fertile? Because she was possibly a les-
bian?—this was a radical simplification.
But it was Nichols’s philosophy of
acting. What reviewers had responded
to in “Barefoot in the Park” and “The
Odd Couple” was the use of the fourth
wall, the imaginary barrier between the
actors and the audience. The old style
of Broadway comedy had the actors
playing to the house, trying for laughs.
Working with May had convinced Nich-
ols that actors should not think that
what they’re saying is funny. “We’re
doing ‘King Lear,’” he used to say in re-
hearsals for “Barefoot in the Park.”
So in a play like Albee’s, when the
characters are in a room—George and
Martha’s living room, for example, where
the entire play is set—the actors don’t“ You first. Crab Rangoon has the right of way over cheese pizza.”