NEIL SIMON, the most prolific comedy writer in the world who died on 26 August 2018 at the age of 91, had a very long career as a writer for television, the theatre and the cinema. There was just nobody else to match him, not even Shakespeare! Michael Darvell looks back at the life of a total comic genius…
Neil Simon was born in the Bronx in New York City on 4 July 1927. How apt that this famous American writer who fed the world with his comedic inventions should be born on the Fourth of July, the most celebrated date in US history. He grew up during the Great Depression, just after the Wall Street crash. His Jewish parents, Irving and Mamie, were not rich but scraped a living from his father’s work as a garment salesman. Neil and his older brother Danny grew up in Washington Heights in a family that was always bickering. When his parents weren’t arguing, Irving would head off for several months, leaving them in virtual poverty.
As a young boy of eight Neil soon realised he had to take care of himself and, to flee from the family squabbles, he would head off to the local movie theatres and fell about at the silent comedies of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. This is where he acquired his taste for comedy, something that influenced him for the rest of his life. He longed to be able to make people laugh hysterically and so he started writing comedy while still in high school.
He wrote comic sketches with brother Danny and eventually joined the team of writers that contributed to the Sid Caesar television programmes in the 1950s, Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and other writers of the day. He wrote for the Sergeant Bilko series, You’ll Never Get Rich (The Phil Silvers Show).
It took him many years to write his first play, Come Blow Your Horn. Opening in 1961 it ran for just under 700 performances and was a popular success. It was later filmed with Sinatra and Tony Bill. His first play led to his writing more comedies such as Barefoot in the Park, about a newlywed couple moving into their first apartment; it was an immediate success in 1963, running for four years. It starred Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. Redford then made the film version with Jane Fonda and that was a hit too. The Odd Couple in 1965 ran for nearly a thousand performances and won the author a Tony Award. Simon’s success was clearly sealed and after that, he could (almost) do no wrong.
Hit followed hit including Plaza Suite, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Sunshine Boys, Chapter Two, The Gingerbread Lady, I Ought To Be In Pictures, California Suite, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound, Lost in Yonkers, The Goodbye Girl, Laughter on the 23rd Floor and many others in a long career which made him possibly the most prolific playwright since William Shakespeare. Again, many of these other plays became film versions. He also wrote original screenplays of After the Fox, The Out-of-Towners, The Heartbreak Kid, Murder By Death, The Cheap Detective, Seems Like Old Times, Max Dugan Returns and even The Odd Couple II.
Although Neil Simon wrote the books for just a few stage musicals, such as Little Me, Sweet Charity and Promises, Promises, early on in his career he adapted shows for television including Best Foot Forward, Babes in Toyland, A Connecticut Yankee, The Chocolate Soldier, The Desert Song and The Great Waltz.
Patrick Dennis’ Little Me, a parody of the life of a fictional stage, screen and TV star called Belle Poitrine, was produced in 1962 with a book by Simon to music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Sid Caesar played seven roles as Belle’s husbands and lovers. In London in 1964 Bruce Forsyth played the Sid Caesar roles. The show has been revived several times in the US and in London in 1984 with Russ Abbot. Many great songs came from this show including ‘The Other Side of the Tracks’, ‘Deep Down Inside’, ‘Be a Performer’, ‘I’ve Got Your Number’, ‘Poor Little Hollywood Star’ and ‘Real Live Girl’.
Sweet Charity (1966) was based on Federico Fellini’s Notte di Cabiria, his 1957 film about a Roman streetwalker, which starred Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina. Bob Fosse choreographed and directed the show with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. It starred Fosse’s then wife, dancer Gwen Verdon. In 1969 he directed the film version with Shirley MacLaine in the title role. It spawned many classic show songs including ‘Big Spender’, ‘If My Friends Could See Me Now’, ‘There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This’, ‘The Rhythm of Life’, ‘Where Am I Going?’, ‘I’m a Brass Band’ and ‘I Love to Cry at Weddings’ among others.
Promises, Promises (1968) was based on Billy Wilder’s 1960 comedy The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Burt Bacharach wrote the music to Hal David’s lyrics, Michael Bennett choreographed the show which had a book by Neil Simon who later on contributed (uncredited) to Bennett’s A Chorus Line (1975) when the script needed some polishing. Promises, Promises initially ran for over 1200 performances in New York, with Jerry Orbach, Jill O’Hara and Donna McKechnie. The West End production in 1969 featured Betty Buckley and Tony Roberts. Songs from the show include ‘I Say a Little Prayer’, ‘A House is Not a Home’ and ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’.
What was the secret of Neil Simon’s success? He wrote about real people that his audiences could identify with – just ordinary Joes and Joans – and the problems they had to face in their domestic lives whenever the world seemed to be at odds with them. His audience was in a way looking at themselves on stage, recognising Simon’s modest characters and their battles with what everyday life threw at them. And of course Simon always had that streak of Jewish humour that ran through most of his writing. He just couldn’t help but be funny even in the direst of situations.
For his pains Simon received multiple awards including an Emmy Award in 1959 for his TV work on The Phil Silvers Show, Tony Awards for The Odd Couple, Biloxi Blues and Lost in Yonkers, the last of which also received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, many awards from the Writers Guild of America, a Golden Globe for The Goodbye Girl, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour among many other awards. He was nominated for more Academy Awards and Tony Awards than any other writer. He was also honoured by several universities and since 2003 has had a summer season of professional repertory theatre devoted to the preservation of his plays. Perhaps the ultimate recognition of his place in US entertainment was the renaming of the Alvin Theatre on Broadway as the Neil Simon Theatre.
Neil Simon was born, raised and lived in New York City. He died there on 26 August 2018, aged 91, from renal failure, Alzheimer’a disease and complications with pneumonia. He married five times. First, he was married to dancer Joan Baim for 20 years. She died of bone cancer in 1973. He was then married to actress Marsha Mason for ten years and wrote his play Chapter Two as a tribute to Mason who bore the brunt of Simon’s grief over the loss of his first wife. Then he married actress Diane Lander, twice, and finally actress Elaine Joyce. It is said that had his first wife not died prematurely, he probably would never have remarried. Neil Simon fathered two daughters, Nancy and Ellen, from his first marriage, and he adopted Bryn, the daughter of Diane Lander from a previous relationship.
For as long as we have theatre, cinema and television there will always be a place to enjoy the comic genius that was Neil Simon. America and the world has lost a great writer, one that for his humour, his pathos and his understanding of the lives of ordinary people, is irreplaceable.
Neil Simon: 4 July 1927-26 August 2018. R.I.P.
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