Sex comedy, if of a generally rather cautious and compromised kind, proved one of the staples of Hollywood humor in the 1970s. Typical were The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), in which George Segal tries on his rumpled up charm as a meek bookshop assistant who gets well more than he bargains for in Barbara Streisand's idiosyncratic call girl, and A Touch of Class (1973) which starred Segal once again, this time around as a brash insurance salesman, partnered by Glenda Jackson as the businesswoman with whom he indulges in a torrid extramarital affair. On the heels of A Touch of Class, Segal was cast in Blume in Love ; an engaging and engrossing film in which director Paul Mazursky consolidated the instinct he had showcased in the raunchy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) for sympathetic and inventively funny examinations of modern sexual customs, a talent he was subsequently to develop in An Unmarried Woman (1978) a long and winding journey into the conjugal world of an estranged thirty-something portrayed with especial authenticity by Jill Clayburgh
It was the enormous popularity of The Graduate (1967) which tells the tale of a young man's first encounters with sex and love that truly gave impetus to 'permissive' comedy, while the scale of its success also catapulted the career of Mike Nichols its director who was now a prestigious and hot commodity in the industry. Nichols' blockbuster anti-war satire Catch-22 (1970) an adaptation of Joseph Heller's eponymous cult novel of the early sixties was followed by Carnal Knowledge (1971) which, scripted by syndicated newspaper cartoonist Jules Feiffer, captures the amorous rakes progress' of two old college friends. Perhaps the best achieved film of director Nichols, while his least ambitious ;The Fortune Cookie (1975) a standout farce set in the 1920s, with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty as a pair of incompetent would-be killers.
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Nichols initially made a gilded reputation partnering Elaine May, first in nightclubs and then on Broadway in a spate of satirical sketches. Elaine May was herself to venture into the cinema, first as an actress and ultimately director who certainly proved her mettle working with the inimitable John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in 1976's black comedy Mikey and Nicky..