Eli mentioned it in The Morning News but it deserves a follow-up: Mike Nichols—Emmy-, Tony-, and Oscar-winning director and Grammy-winning comic performer—died yesterday at age 83.

Nichols's primary artistic legacy will likely be his films—1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1967's The Graduate, 1983's Silkwood, 1988's Working Girl, and so many more.

But I'll always remember him most fondly for the work he did in theater, as a performer, director, and producer. Nichols had an eye for exceptional young talent, directing the stage and film versions of Gilda Radner's Gilda Live! in 1980 and bringing Whoopi Goldberg's star-making one-woman show Whoopi Goldberg to Broadway in 1984. And then there was his own early stage work—improvisational comedy created and performed with Elaine May, which took Broadway by storm in 1960 with An Evening with Nichols & May. In closing, here's the young duo performing at the 1959 Emmys. RIP Mike Nichols.