Neil Simon is America's best-known living playwright, and possibly the most financially successful dramatist of all time. Beginning with Come Blow Your Horn in 1961, Simon has written a long succession of Broadway hit comedies which have earned him huge audiences and numerous prizes, including four Tony Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1966, Simon had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway, the only author in modern times to accomplish such a feat.
Among his better known plays are Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Sunshine Boys (1972), and Broadway Bound (1986).
In addition to his work for the stage, Simon has written the screenplays for more than twenty movies--many of which have been adaptations of his own plays--and has won Emmy Awards for his writing for such television comedians as Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Lewis.
Simon's life is a textbook case of the American success story. The grandson of Jewish immigrants and the second of two sons, Simon was born into a lower-middle class family in The Bronx in 1927. His father, Irving, was a salesman in the garment industry, and his mother, Mamie, was a housewife. Life in the Simon family during the Depression years of the 1930s was marked by frequent troubles, emotional and financial, caused by Irving's periodic abandonment of his wife and children. Left to fend for themselves, the family took in lodgers, providing room and board for strangers in order to make up for the lost income of the absent father.
Simon found escape from his family woes at the movies, especially in the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. It was the exhilaration and solace provided by these comedians that pointed Simon toward his ultimate goal as a playwright, which he has defined as the desire "to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out."
The road to that goal led through DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, from which Simon graduated in 1943 at age sixteen. Following his high school years he went to work in the garment district in New York, employed, in his words, in "lifting heavy things." In 1945, toward the end of World War II, Simon left the garment business and entered the Army Air Force, spending a year and a half in Biloxi, Mississippi and Denver, Colorado. According to the author Biloxi Blues grew out of this experience. As part of his training for the Air Force, Simon attended a training program at New York University. His year studying engineering at NYU constitutes his only experience of higher education. He has often felt embarrassed by his lack of a college degree, especially in a field populated by highly-educated writers and artists--a situation he compares to "being in a room where everybody speaks French but you."
In 1946, Simon went to work in the mailroom of the New York office of Warner Brothers, a major Hollywood studio, joining his older brother, Danny, who was employed there in the publicity department. By this time, Neil and Danny had begun working together as a comedy writing team, creating sketches for amateur performances put on by employees of a New York department store. On the alert for professional opportunities, they learned that a well-known producer at CBS, Goodman Ace, was scouting new comedy-writing talent. They presented themselves to Ace, who challenged them to produce a sketch funny enough to be broadcast on one of CBS's successful radio programs. In response, they created a monologue by an imaginary Brooklyn usherette describing Joan Crawford in a typical Hollywood tearjerker: "She's in love with a gangster who is caught and sent to Sing Sing and given the electric chair and she promises to wait for him." The sketch was a hit with Ace, and the Simon brothers were put to work writing for Robert Q. Lewis, a major radio personality who was later to become a success in the early years of television.
Neil and Danny continued working together in radio and television, while also writing material for musical reviews on Broadway and at resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains, known as the "Borscht Circuit." (Borscht is a kind of soup made from beefstock and beets which was popular among the mostly Jewish patrons of these hotels.) By 1956, Danny decided to move to California to pursue a career as a director. Neil remained in New York, writing for "Your Show of Shows," a weekly comedy review starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, now regarded as a classic of television's "golden age."
In 1958, Simon started working on the script that was to become his first full-length play, Come Blow Your Horn. Produced finally in 1961, the play contains a strong autobiographical element. "I knew that you should write about what you know," Simon has said of this play. "I figured, OK, I know my family, so I'll do something about how my older brother Danny and I left home and took our first apartment."
Later plays by Simon have also employed autobiographical themes and situations. Following the death of his first wife, Joan, and his remarriage to the actress, Marsha Mason, Simon wrote Chapter Two (1977), a play that deals with the problems of beginning a new life with a different mate. Starting in the mid-eighties, he embarked on what was to become a series of self-portraits focusing on the crucial problems and events of his life. Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) looks back at family tensions during the Depression, while Broadway Bound (1986) examines a major turning point in the life of a young writer who bears a strong resemblance to Neil Simon. Biloxi Blues (1985), as we have seen, deals with the playwright's life in the military, while Jake's Women (1992) once again grapples with the difficulty of accepting his first wife's death. Simon explores the experiences of his early professional life in Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993) which recaptures the hilarity of his years as a writer for Sid Caesar.
Among his better known plays are Barefoot in the Park (1963), The Odd Couple (1965), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Sunshine Boys (1972), and Broadway Bound (1986).
In addition to his work for the stage, Simon has written the screenplays for more than twenty movies--many of which have been adaptations of his own plays--and has won Emmy Awards for his writing for such television comedians as Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Lewis.
Simon's life is a textbook case of the American success story. The grandson of Jewish immigrants and the second of two sons, Simon was born into a lower-middle class family in The Bronx in 1927. His father, Irving, was a salesman in the garment industry, and his mother, Mamie, was a housewife. Life in the Simon family during the Depression years of the 1930s was marked by frequent troubles, emotional and financial, caused by Irving's periodic abandonment of his wife and children. Left to fend for themselves, the family took in lodgers, providing room and board for strangers in order to make up for the lost income of the absent father.
Simon found escape from his family woes at the movies, especially in the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. It was the exhilaration and solace provided by these comedians that pointed Simon toward his ultimate goal as a playwright, which he has defined as the desire "to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out."
The road to that goal led through DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, from which Simon graduated in 1943 at age sixteen. Following his high school years he went to work in the garment district in New York, employed, in his words, in "lifting heavy things." In 1945, toward the end of World War II, Simon left the garment business and entered the Army Air Force, spending a year and a half in Biloxi, Mississippi and Denver, Colorado. According to the author Biloxi Blues grew out of this experience. As part of his training for the Air Force, Simon attended a training program at New York University. His year studying engineering at NYU constitutes his only experience of higher education. He has often felt embarrassed by his lack of a college degree, especially in a field populated by highly-educated writers and artists--a situation he compares to "being in a room where everybody speaks French but you."
In 1946, Simon went to work in the mailroom of the New York office of Warner Brothers, a major Hollywood studio, joining his older brother, Danny, who was employed there in the publicity department. By this time, Neil and Danny had begun working together as a comedy writing team, creating sketches for amateur performances put on by employees of a New York department store. On the alert for professional opportunities, they learned that a well-known producer at CBS, Goodman Ace, was scouting new comedy-writing talent. They presented themselves to Ace, who challenged them to produce a sketch funny enough to be broadcast on one of CBS's successful radio programs. In response, they created a monologue by an imaginary Brooklyn usherette describing Joan Crawford in a typical Hollywood tearjerker: "She's in love with a gangster who is caught and sent to Sing Sing and given the electric chair and she promises to wait for him." The sketch was a hit with Ace, and the Simon brothers were put to work writing for Robert Q. Lewis, a major radio personality who was later to become a success in the early years of television.
Neil and Danny continued working together in radio and television, while also writing material for musical reviews on Broadway and at resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains, known as the "Borscht Circuit." (Borscht is a kind of soup made from beefstock and beets which was popular among the mostly Jewish patrons of these hotels.) By 1956, Danny decided to move to California to pursue a career as a director. Neil remained in New York, writing for "Your Show of Shows," a weekly comedy review starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, now regarded as a classic of television's "golden age."
In 1958, Simon started working on the script that was to become his first full-length play, Come Blow Your Horn. Produced finally in 1961, the play contains a strong autobiographical element. "I knew that you should write about what you know," Simon has said of this play. "I figured, OK, I know my family, so I'll do something about how my older brother Danny and I left home and took our first apartment."
Later plays by Simon have also employed autobiographical themes and situations. Following the death of his first wife, Joan, and his remarriage to the actress, Marsha Mason, Simon wrote Chapter Two (1977), a play that deals with the problems of beginning a new life with a different mate. Starting in the mid-eighties, he embarked on what was to become a series of self-portraits focusing on the crucial problems and events of his life. Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) looks back at family tensions during the Depression, while Broadway Bound (1986) examines a major turning point in the life of a young writer who bears a strong resemblance to Neil Simon. Biloxi Blues (1985), as we have seen, deals with the playwright's life in the military, while Jake's Women (1992) once again grapples with the difficulty of accepting his first wife's death. Simon explores the experiences of his early professional life in Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993) which recaptures the hilarity of his years as a writer for Sid Caesar.