A New Leaf is a 1971 American black comedy film written and directed by Elaine May in her directorial debut, based on the short story "The Green Heart" by Jack Ritchie.

However, despite several accolades, award nominations, and a run at Radio City Music Hall,[4] A New Leaf fared poorly at the box office.

Deciding to obtain and murder a wealthy wife, Henry wheedles a $50,000 loan from Harry to tide him over and finance his courtship.

Henry has only six weeks to find a wealthy bride and repay the money or forfeit everything he owns (worth $500,000, primarily in his beloved art collection).

With only days remaining, he meets the answer to his prayers: clumsy, painfully shy, immensely wealthy Henrietta Lowell, a botany professor with no family.

He immediately fires her 17 household servants, who were colluding with her crooked lawyer to bilk her through bloated salaries and outrageous expenses.

When Henrietta discovers that he has a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, she suggests that Henry teach at her university, fantasizing about grading papers together in the evenings.

Similar problems dogged her subsequent projects, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar, the latter named by critics at the time as one of the worst films ever made.

During shooting, producer Howard W. Koch tried to have May replaced, but she had put a $200,000(equivalent to $1.6 million in 2024) penalty clause into her contract, and he was persuaded to keep her.

The original story included a subplot in which Henry discovers from the household accounts that Henrietta is being blackmailed on dubious grounds by lawyer McPherson, and another character played by William Hickey.

(In the early 1990s, head of Paramount Repertory Michael Schlesinger asked that the vaults be searched to see if the trims had survived, in the hopes of restoring May's original cut; nothing was found.)

Matthau never thought her capable of holding all three roles of actor, director and writer, and the judge eventually sided with Paramount, saying that their version was hilarious and bound to be a hit.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Elaine May is a comedic dynamo both behind and in front of the camera in this viciously funny screwball farce, with able support provided by Walter Matthau.

"[10] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, describing it as "hilarious, and cockeyed, and warm", further stating, "A New Leaf is, in fact, one of the funniest movies of our unfunny age.

"[9] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby calls it "a beautifully and gently cockeyed movie that recalls at least two different traditions of American film comedy.

[12] Independent critic Leonard Maltin gave the film 2½ stars out of 4, calling it an "amusing comedy" with "many funny moments, and May is terrific, but it's wildly uneven".

[13] Charles Champlin, writing for the Los Angeles Times, stated, "There are occasional moments which don't quite hang together, but the level of successful invention is marvelously high, and A New Leaf achieves the nutty and improbable grandeur of the best movie comedies of the past.