Renowned playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose hits such as "The Odd Couple," ''Barefoot in the Park" and the "Brighton Beach" trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died at the age of 91.
Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said Bill Evans, a longtime friend and spokesman for Shubert Organization theaters.
The theater world quickly mourned his death, with Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein tweeting that Simon "could write a joke that would make you laugh, define the character, the situation, and even the world's problems."
Even before he launched his theater career, Simon made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar, which also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.
Simon became American theater's most successful and prolific playwright in the second half of the 20th century, often chronicling middle-class issues and fears. Starting with "Come Blow Your Horn" in 1961 and continuing into this century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical.
His list of credits is staggering. 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. The previous year had seen a popular revival of "The Odd Couple," reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in "The Producers" several years earlier.
In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Simon reflected on his success.
"I know that I have reached the pinnacle of rewards. There's no more money anyone can pay me that I need. There are no awards they can give me that I haven't won. I have no reason to write another play except that I am alive and I like to do it," he said.
Bespectacled and mild-looking, Simon was a relentless writer and rewriter.
"I am most alive and most fulfilled sitting alone in a room, hoping that those words forming on the paper in the Smith-Corona will be the first perfect play ever written in a single draft," Simon wrote in the introduction to one of the many anthologies of his plays.
He was a meticulous jokesmith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with comic one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability. No matter. For much of his career, audiences embraced his work, which often focused on middle-class, urban life, many of the plots drawn from his own personal experience.
"I don't write social and political plays because I've always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world," he told The Paris Review in 1992.
Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 for best author – a category now discontinued – for "The Odd Couple," although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy's "The Subject Was Roses." He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for "Biloxi Blues." In 1991, his "Lost in Yonkers" received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. He also received a special achievement Tony in 1975.
Simon's own life figured most prominently in what became known as his "Brighton Beach" trilogy – "Brighton Beach Memoirs," ''Biloxi Blues" and "Broadway Bound" – which many consider his finest works. In them, Simon's alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to a budding career as a writer.
Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York to a Jewish family and spent his childhood in the Bronx and Washington Heights during the Depression era. His father, Irving, was a garment-industry salesman and he was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed him Doc.
Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945 and 1946, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948, and then for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon's 1993 play, "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."
Yet Simon grew dissatisfied with television writing and the network restrictions that accompanied it. Out of his frustration came "Come Blow Your Horn," which starred Hal March and Warren Berlinger as two brothers (not unlike Danny and Neil Simon) trying to figure out what to do with their lives. The comedy ran for more than a year on Broadway.
It was his second play, 1963's "Barefoot in the Park," that really put Simon on the map. Critically well-received, the comedy was directed by Mike Nichols and concerned the tribulations of a pair of newlyweds, played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, who lived on the top floor of a New York brownstone.
Simon cemented that success two years later with "The Odd Couple," a comedy about bickering roommates Oscar, a gruff, slovenly sportswriter, and Felix, a neat, fussy photographer. Walter Matthau, as Oscar, and Art Carney, as Felix, starred on Broadway, with Matthau and Jack Lemmon playing the roles in a successful movie version. A TV series followed, starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, and ran on ABC from 1970-1975.
The play remains one of Simon's most durable and popular works. Nathan Lane as Oscar and Matthew Broderick as Felix starred in a revival that was one of the biggest hits of the 2005-2006 Broadway season.
Many of Simon's plays were turned into films. As well as "The Odd Couple," he wrote the screenplays for the movie versions of "Barefoot in the Park," ''The Sunshine Boys," "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," and more.
Simon also wrote original screenplays, the best-known being "The Goodbye Girl," starring Richard Dreyfuss as a struggling actor, and "The Heartbreak Kid," with Charles Grodin as a recently married man who wants to drop his new wife as he lusts for a blonde goddess played by Cybill Shepherd.
In his later years, Simon had more difficulty on Broadway. After the success of "Lost in Yonkers," which starred Mercedes Ruehl as a gentle, simple-minded woman controlled by her domineering mother (Irene Worth), the playwright had a string of financially unsuccessful plays including "Jake's Women," ''Laughter on the 23rd Floor" and "Proposals." Simon even went off-Broadway with "London Suite" in 1995, but it did not run long either.
"The Dinner Party," a comedy set in Paris about husbands and ex-wives, was a modest hit in 2000, primarily because of the box-office strength of its two stars, Henry Winkler and John Ritter. A hit revival of "Promises, Promises" in 2010 starred Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.
He wrote two memoirs, "Rewrites" (1996) and "The Play Goes On" (1999). They were combined into "Neil Simon's Memoirs."
Simon was married five times, twice to the same woman. His first wife, Joan Baim, died of cancer in 1973, after 20 years of marriage. They had two daughters, Ellen and Nancy. Simon dealt with her death in "Chapter Two" (1977), telling the story of a widower who starts anew.
The playwright then married actress Marsha Mason, who had appeared in his stage comedy "The Good Doctor" and who went on to star in several films written by Simon including "The Goodbye Girl," "The Cheap Detective," "Chapter Two," "Only When I Laugh" and "Max Dugan Returns." They divorced in 1982.
Simon and third wife Diane Lander married twice – first in 1987-1988, and again in 1990-1998 – and adopted Lander's daughter, Bryn, from a previous marriage. He then married actress Elaine Joyce in 1999.
As well as his three daughters, he is survived by three grandchildren and one great-grandson.
"I suspect I shall keep on writing in a vain search for that perfect play. I hope I will keep my equilibrium and sense of humor when I'm told I haven't achieved it," Simon once said about his voluminous output of work.
"At any rate, the trip has been wonderful. As George and Ira Gershwin said, 'They Can't Take That Away From Me.'"
