Neil Simon, whose comic touch in “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and many other hits on stage and screen made him the most commercially successfully playwright of the 20th century — and perhaps of all time — has died, according to his representative. He was 91.
From “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 to “45 Seconds From Broadway” in 2001, 30 of Simon's plays opened on Broadway, including five musicals for which he wrote the book. Seventeen of them ran a year or more, and many were subsequently embraced by theater's grass-roots, seen year after year across the nation as staples of community theater, dinner theater and high school productions.
Though he once described writing plays as “my lifeblood” and put screenwriting a distant second, Simon adapted 18 of his plays for film or television and wrote 11 screenplays not based on his stage work. Among his original stories for film were “The Out-of-Towners” (1970) and “The Goodbye Girl” (1977). Four of his scripts were nominated for Academy Awards.
Early in his career, critical consensus pegged Simon as an insubstantial writer more interested in drawing laughs than in probing the truth of human existence. But as time went on, he pushed to deepen his plays and expose more nakedly the pain — much of it derived from his own experience — that he identified as the engine of his comedy.
Though almost never rated as the literary peer of such elite contemporaries as Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, August Wilson and Tony Kushner, Simon did eventually achieve a fair measure of critical approval to go with his great popularity. That ascent was capped in 1991 when “Lost in Yonkers,” one of a series of autobiographical works from the 1980s and 1990s, won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the last of his four Tony Awards.
Simon wrote mainly about what he knew from personal experience. He kept a steady, daily, seven-hour regimen while drafting his plays, then went into overdrive with pressured late-night rewriting sessions when his shows were in rehearsals or out-of-town previews — a process he relished and valued so much that he dubbed his first memoir “Rewrites” (1996).
Simon once estimated that he started four plays for every story he finished. He often said he was driven not so much by the desire to make money or see his name on a marquee as by the sheer release he found in writing.
From “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 to “45 Seconds From Broadway” in 2001, 30 of Simon's plays opened on Broadway, including five musicals for which he wrote the book. Seventeen of them ran a year or more, and many were subsequently embraced by theater's grass-roots, seen year after year across the nation as staples of community theater, dinner theater and high school productions.
Though he once described writing plays as “my lifeblood” and put screenwriting a distant second, Simon adapted 18 of his plays for film or television and wrote 11 screenplays not based on his stage work. Among his original stories for film were “The Out-of-Towners” (1970) and “The Goodbye Girl” (1977). Four of his scripts were nominated for Academy Awards.
Early in his career, critical consensus pegged Simon as an insubstantial writer more interested in drawing laughs than in probing the truth of human existence. But as time went on, he pushed to deepen his plays and expose more nakedly the pain — much of it derived from his own experience — that he identified as the engine of his comedy.
Though almost never rated as the literary peer of such elite contemporaries as Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, August Wilson and Tony Kushner, Simon did eventually achieve a fair measure of critical approval to go with his great popularity. That ascent was capped in 1991 when “Lost in Yonkers,” one of a series of autobiographical works from the 1980s and 1990s, won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the last of his four Tony Awards.
Simon wrote mainly about what he knew from personal experience. He kept a steady, daily, seven-hour regimen while drafting his plays, then went into overdrive with pressured late-night rewriting sessions when his shows were in rehearsals or out-of-town previews — a process he relished and valued so much that he dubbed his first memoir “Rewrites” (1996).
Simon once estimated that he started four plays for every story he finished. He often said he was driven not so much by the desire to make money or see his name on a marquee as by the sheer release he found in writing.
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-neil-simon-20180826-story.html