Neil Simon achieved unparalleled success in theater and in film, having written more than thirty plays open on Broadway over a span of four decades.
Neil Simon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright of some of Broadway’s most successful comedies, including “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple” and “Plaza Suite,” died Saturday night due to complications from pneumonia. He was 91.
With his wife, Elaine Joyce, and his daughters Ellen Simon and Nancy Simon at his side, Simon died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, according to his representative.
Simon achieved unparalleled success in theater and in film, having written more than thirty plays and musicals that opened on Broadway over a span of four decades.
Among his numerous hits were “The Goodbye Girl,” “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple,” “Sweet Charity,” “The Star Spangled Girl,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “Biloxi Blues,” “Broadway Bound” and “Lost in Yonkers.” It was not infrequent for two of his works to be running on Broadway stages at the same time.
Born Marvin Neil Simon in the Bronx, New York, he studied at NYU and the University of Denver while serving in the U. S. Army Air Force Reserve during World War II. His distinguished career began working alongside his older brother Danny, writing scripts for radio and television shows, during which time they were hired to join Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart writing for Sid Caesar’s icon TV series, “Your Show of Shows.”
Ten years later, Simon began writing for the stage. Described by many as one of the most commercially successfully playwright of the 20th century, Simon’s first produced play was in 1961 with “Come Blow Your Horn” and his last was 50 years later with “45 Seconds From Broadway.”
Throughout his years of writing plays, Simon also wrote more than 25 feature films — both adaptations of his plays and original screenplays. In 1979, he received a Lifetime Achievement Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America.
In addition to four Academy Award nominations, four Emmy nominations and 17 Tony nominations with three wins (in addition to a Special Tony Award for his extraordinary contributions to the American Theatre), Simon received a Pulitzer Prize, four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Monte Cristo Award.
He also received honorary degrees from Williams College and Hofstra University and was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1995.
Simon wrote two volumes of memoirs, “Rewrites” (1996), and “The Play Goes On” (1999), which were republished in one volume in 2016 as, “Neil Simon’s Memoirs.”
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