NEIL SIMON

(4 July 1927 - 26 August 2018)

The American writer Neil Simon, who has died aged 91 from renal failure following Alzheimer’s disease, conquered the worlds of theatre, cinema and television, mostly with comedy, often based on his own life experiences. His career began as a gag writer on TV in the late 1940s with Sid Caesar’s long-running series Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. He also did TV adaptations of Best Foot Forward, Babes in Toyland, A Connecticut Yankee, The Chocolate Soldier, The Desert Song and The Great Waltz. He wrote some twenty episodes of the Sergeant Bilko You’ll Never Get Rich series and more besides. His first play was Come Blow Your Horn which was followed by Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity, Plaza Suite and Last of the Red Hot Lovers, all of which became films written by him. The Odd Couple also made a perennially successful TV series. Other of his plays that made movies were The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Sunshine Boys, Chapter Two, The Gingerbread Lady (filmed as Only When I Laugh), I Ought To Be In Pictures, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound, Lost in Yonkers and Biloxi Blues, the last four being very much based on his early life in New York. He also wrote the original screenplays of The Out of Towners, The Heartbreak Kid, Murder by Death, The Goodbye Girl, The Cheap Detective, California Suite and Seems Like Old Times. Simon wrote the books for the stage musicals Little Me, Sweet Charity and Promises, Promises. With further TV movies and his other adaptations, Neil Simon must surely have been the most productive comedy writer in the world. His plays were staged everywhere and his films were global successes. Actors no doubt fought to be in his plays and films and he certainly raised the profiles of performers such as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. He never won an Oscar himself, but he did win Tony awards for The Odd Couple, Biloxi Blues and Lost in Yonkers, the last gaining him a Pulitzer Prize. Neil Simon was born, lived and died in New York. He was married five times, to Joan Baim, Marsha Mason, Diane Lander (twice) and Elaine Joyce, and had three children. The Alvin Theatre on Broadway was renamed the Neil Simon Theatre in his honour.

MICHAEL DARVELL