![]() ![]() Simon won the 1965 Best Author Tony Award for The Odd Couple. Both shows were directed by Mike Nichols. ![]() Next came two of the biggest hits of the 1960s, Barefoot in the Park (1963), starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley, and The Odd Couple (1965), starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney. He wrote the book for the Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh musical, Little Me (1962), which starred Sid Caesar, directed by Bob Fosse. His first Broadway show was a comedy, Come Blow Your Horn (1961), directed by Stanley Prager. Simon turned his attention to writing for the stage. On his own, Neil Simon wrote more than a dozen episodes of The Phil Silvers Show (Sgt. Neil and Danny Simon were hired to join Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and others, writing for Sid Caesar’s legendary television series, Your Show of Shows, and its successor, Caesar’s Hour. Neil Simon began his career in the early 1950s, working as a team with his older brother, Danny, writing scripts for radio and television shows, including The Garry Moore Show. Simon studied at NYU and the University of Denver while serving in the U.S. He grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School. He had one brother, Danny Simon, eight years his senior. Marvin Neil Simon was born in the Bronx, New York, on July 4, 1927, to Irving Simon, a salesman in the garment district, and Mamie Levy Simon, a saleslady at Gimbel’s department store. His plays have been translated into dozens of languages and are produced around the world. Simon to have two Broadway shows running concurrently, sometimes three, and once, in 1966, he had four ( Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity and The Star Spangled Girl ). The directors include Mike Nichols, Gene Saks, Bob Fosse, Robert Moore, Joe Mantello, Jerry Zaks, Herbert Ross, John Rando, and Michael Bennett.ĭuring his long-running career, it was not unusual for Mr. Scott, Maureen Stapleton, Christopher Plummer, Peter Falk, Lee Grant, Tammy Grimes, George Grizzard, Jack Weston, Bernadette Peters, Martin Short, Linda Lavin, Gwen Verdon and Art Carney. Īmong a host of leading actors who appeared in Simon plays and musicals on Broadway are Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Robert Redford, Walter Matthau, George C. Many of his later plays explored darker themes, as those found in Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound and Lost in Yonkers. Neil Simon established his reputation writing some of Broadway’s most successful comedies, including Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and Plaza Suite. ![]() For almost half a century, his comedies have offered light at the end of whatever dark tunnel America has found itself in.” – John Lahr, The New Yorker, May 30, 2010 “No playwright in Broadway’s long and raucous history has so dominated the boulevard as the softly astringent Simon. He made his playwriting debut in 1961, with Come Blow Your Horn and concluded his extraordinary Broadway run with 45 Seconds From Broadway in 2001. Neil Simon’s unparalleled career in the theater included more than thirty plays and musicals that opened on Broadway over a span of four decades. Simon’s daughters, Ellen Simon and Nancy Simon. His wife, Elaine Joyce Simon, was at his bedside along with Mr. The cause was complications from pneumonia. He is survived by daughters Ellen Simon, Nancy Simon, and Bryn Lander Simon, and wife Elaine Joyce Simon, whom he married in 1999.Neil Simon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, died last night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He later received honorary degrees from Williams College and Hofstra University and was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1995. In 1975, Simon received a special Tony Award for his extraordinary contributions to the American Theater. In "The Oxford Companion to American Theatre," Gerald Bordman wrote of Simon, "He is a shrewd observer of human foibles and a master of the one-line gag." "Perhaps the secret to Simon's success is his ability, brilliantly displayed in those four plays but evident from the very beginning, to show us - between, in, and around the funny lines - the pain, aspiration, and sheer panic behind all those unforgettable characters," the Kennedy Center wrote of Simon. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Simon continued to churn out hits, which included "Sweet Charity," and "The Out-of-Towners." New York City was the canvas for the majority of his work.
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