Mike Nichols

You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted - Mike Nichols

I will always remember Mike Nichols this way

In 1955 Nichols was invited to join the Compass Players, which was predecessor to Chicago's Second City and whose members included Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Del Close, and Nancy Ponder, directed by Paul Sills.

Nichols moved back to Chicago to perform comedy with Compass and started doing improvisational routines with Elaine May, which led to the formation of the comedy duo Nichols and May in 1958. Three records of their routines, best-sellers at the time, were released and the duo made appearances in nightclubs, on radio and on several television programs.