Neil Simon
Marvin Neil Simon was born the fourth of July1927 in the Bronx, New York, the second son of Irving Simon, a Jewish traveling salesman and his wife Mamie. He grew up in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. He was not a very good student and was eager to leave his all-boys high school to fight World War II. While attending New York University as an engineering student, Simon served in the Air Force Reserve where he was the Sports Editor for the Rev-Meter from 1945-1946 until fulfillment of his obligation at which time he took a position with Warner Brothers as a mailroom clerk. Following his discharge in 1946, he began writing scripts with his brother, Danny, for radio and television personalities. The first of their jobs, paying fifty-dollars-a-week was writing for Goodman's CBS radio show. Their sketches for Phil Silvers, Gary Moore, Jerry Lewis and Broadway shows such as Catch a Star (1955) and New Faces of 1956 contributed to Neil's wide popularity. The siblings parted ways and Simon went solo. His early days as a playwright were filled with fears of failure. "In the beginning, it terrorized me, because I knew if my plays failed it meant going to California and making a living in television for the rest of my life
was finally given serious recognition with the winning of the Pulitzer for Lost in Yonkers (1991). "There's a change in that attitude. Since getting the Pulitzer Prize...they are writing about me in a different way." [Interview With Neil Simon, Twenty-eight plays under his belt, it is amazing that virtually every one has been critically acclaimed, from his first, Come Blow Your Horn (1961) to Odd Couple II (1998). Simon also holds the record for the most Broadway hits in American Theatre History, the Kennedy Honors and life achievement award one after another. In 1966 he had four hit shows on Broadway yet, he became increasingly dissatisfied at hearing critics dismiss him as a "gag-writer". With The Gingerbread Lady (1970), Neil began dealing with more serious themes; Chapter Two (1977) was autobiographical and Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) was the first in a series of dramas based on his youth. In 1971 he was name "Entertainer of the Year" by the American entertainment guide "C Magazine". He entirely naturalistic in a time when few others are. [McGovern, Edythe M. Not-So-Simple Neil Simon: A Critical Study. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979] They are almost totally without intellectual or political content. They are about human relationships, not ideas. He also acknowledges the complexity of human experience. Simon worries about getting old but not dying. "The dying part doesn't bother me, it's just the getting old...The aches and pains are there more and more. But the work hasn't stopped. That's still there as strong as ever." [Interview With Neil Simon, http://www.titlepage.com /cgi-local/shop.pl/page =simon.htm] As far as Neil Simon's importance to the "theatre world" I could not state it any better than one of his own peers. Walter Kerr has stated, " Whenever a playwright manages to be funny all night long...he is immediately in danger of being condescended to...Because Americans have always tended to underestimate writers who make them laugh, Neil Simon's accomplishments have never gained as much serious critical praise as they deserve. His best comedies contain not only a host of funny lines, but numerous memorable characters and an incisively dramatised set of beliefs that are not without merit. Simon is, in fact, one of the finest writers of comedy in American literary history." [Walter Kerr, "Simon's Funny-Don't Laugh", New Yoork Times, Feb. 25, 1968 Sec 2, P.1]
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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