Neil Simon
- Category : Writers-Playwright-script
- Type : MGE
- Profile : 2/4 - Hermit / Opportunist
- Definition : Split - Small (56)
- Incarnation Cross : RAX Tension 2
Categories
Biography
American playwright, screenwriter and author, who wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers.
After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve, and after graduating from high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows from 1950 (where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond), and The Phil Silvers Show, which ran from 1955 to 1959.
He began writing his own plays beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961), which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."
During the 1960s to 1980s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films actually based on his plays. His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he garnered 17 Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays running on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honour.
Simon was married five times, had two children and adopted the daughter of his second wife.
In 2004, he received a kidney transplant from his long-time friend and publicist Bill Evans. Neil Simon died on 26 August 2018, aged 91, after being on life-support while hospitalized for renal failure. He also had Alzheimer's disease. The cause of death was complications with pneumonia, according to Evans. Simon died around 1 a.m. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.