Celebrity Biographies
Gene saks
He was considered one of the great directors of the Broadway theater. Specializing in premiering works by Neil Simon, he brought the best known to the movies: “The Odd Couple.” Gene Saks died at the age of 93 on March 28, 2015 at his New York residence, as a result of pneumonia.
Born in the City of Skyscrapers on November 8, 1921, Jean Michael Saks studied Drama at The New School, a prestigious institution in the city. He got his start as an actor with “South Pacific” in 1949. Retrained as a director, he won his first Tony Award for staging the musical “I Love My Wife.”
He met the prestigious Neil Simon when he was signed to take Barefoot in the Park to the cinema . The playwright was so pleased with the results that he commissioned him to premiere The Odd Couple on stage , which he also adapted for the screen, with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau . He also took care of staging “Biloxi Blues” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” –for which he would win another two Tonys-, “Jake’s Women”, “Rumors”, “Lost in Yonkers”, “Broadway Bound” and “California”. Suite room”. Although they were associated for 25 years, they were never friends, and ended up at odds, when Simon became dissatisfied with his work on “The Goodbye Girl”,
On film, Gene Saks continued to work occasionally as an interpreter, as he was Lemmon’s brother in The Prisoner of Second Avenue , and he also appeared in Not a Fool’s Thing , alongside Paul Newman . He also directed the films Cactus Flower , for which Goldie Hawn won an Oscar, and Above All, Woman . Divorced from fellow actress Bea Arthur , with whom he adopted two children, he had a third with Keren Saks.