Posted on 08/26/2018 12:00:16 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as "The Odd Couple," ''Barefoot in the Park" and his "Brighton Beach" trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.
In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was the American theater's most successful and prolific playwright, often chronicling middle class issues and fears... His list of credits is staggering.
The theater world quickly mourned his death, including Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, who tweeted that Simon "could write a joke that would make you laugh, define the character, the situation, and even the world's problems."
Matthew Broderick, who in 1983 made his Broadway debut in Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and his movie debut in Simon's "Max Dugan Returns," added: "I owe him a career. The theater has lost a brilliantly funny, unthinkably wonderful writer. And even after all this time, I feel I have lost a mentor, a father figure, a deep influence in my life and work."
For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: "Barefoot in the Park," ''The Odd Couple," ''Sweet Charity," and "The Star-Spangled Girl."
Even before he launched his theater career, he made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar that also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.
Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards and an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor. In 1983, he had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.
In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Someone who should be mourned today- a great talent.
Oh, too bad. I saw “Brighton Beach Memoirs” with Matthew Broderick in 1983. The trip to New York was a reward for earning a National Merit Scholarship. We bought cheap, weekday-afternoon seats from the USO.
“Now it’s garbage”.
A difficult childhood often leads to comedy.
From Wiki:
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Irving Simon, was a garment salesman, and his mother, Mamie (Levy) Simon, was mostly a homemaker.[4] Simon had one older brother by eight years, television writer and comedy teacher Danny Simon. He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the period of the Great Depression, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School when he was sixteen, where he was nicknamed “Doc” and described as extremely shy in the school yearbook.[5]:39
Simon’s childhood was difficult and mostly unhappy due to his parents’ “tempestuous marriage” and financial hardship caused by the Depression.[3]:1 He would sometimes block out their arguments by putting a pillow over his ears at night.[6] His father often abandoned the family for months at a time, causing them further financial and emotional hardship. As a result, Simon and his brother Danny were sometimes forced to live with different relatives, or else their parents took in boarders for some income.[3]:2
During an interview with writer Lawrence Grobel, Simon stated: “To this day I never really knew what the reason for all the fights and battles were about between the two of them ... She’d hate him and be very angry, but he would come back and she would take him back. She really loved him.”[7]:378 Simon states that among the reasons he became a writer was to fulfill his need to be independent of such emotional family issues, a need he recognized when he was seven or eight: “I’d better start taking care of myself somehow . . . It made me strong as an independent person.[7]:378
To escape difficulties at home he often took refuge in movie theaters, where he especially enjoyed comedies with silent stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. Simon recalls: “I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.”
Poor guy died the wrong week. He’s gonna get Fawcetted.
RIP Mr. Simon.
Always loved these quotes from him on honorary degrees;
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/04/us/neil-simon-takes-his-honorary-lld-with-grain-of-salt.html
Great movie, underrated all around:
Wrote comedy for Sid Caesar!
RIP, Mr. Simon.
I love the Out of Towners, the original of course.
[Wrote comedy for Sid Caesar!]
I can’t remember who told the story but there was supposedly an instance of Sid almost being run over by a cab in NYC.
Sid asked the cabbie if he remembered what it felt like being born. To which he promptly attempted to pull the cabbie through the vent window of the car. LOL
Sid was a big guy.
I think Mel Brooks told that story, who waa also part of that writing team. Amazing!!
“Oscar we’re out of corn flakes.”
FU
“Took me all day to figure out FU is Felix Ungar. “
Speaking of Matthau, I loved one of his lines from the movie “Out To Sea”:
“Where did you go to college, Gordo?”
“It’s a little place called, ‘F.U.’”
I sat across the aisle from him several years ago. He laughed at everything!
He was to comedy what Jerry Orbach was to Broadway. He was a true comic genius.
There should be some nice tributes on Broadway tonight.
Oscar what annoys you about me the most ?
Is it the cooking, the cleaning, or the crying ?
I’ll tell you exactly what it is Felix.
It’s the cooking, the cleaning, and the crying !
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