Celebrity Biographies
Neil Simon
Writer, playwright, scriptwriter for television shows and movies, Neil Simon considered himself above all playwrights, the field where he considered he had more control over the final result of his creation. The Pulitzer and Tony-winning New Yorker and four-time Oscar nominee has died at the ripe age of 91 from a kidney complication. In 2004 he had undergone a kidney transplant on loan from a good friend, and had long suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
Born in the Bronx in 1927, into a family of Jewish origin, his childhood was not a happy one, due to the divorce of his parents, and the way in which the Great Depression affected them. But he alleviated those pains with his love of going to the movies, where he especially enjoyed the comedies of Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton .. The brilliant combination that these comedians achieved between humor and drama would have a clear influence on their theatrical works and scripts, of bittersweet humor, and which precisely reflected the domestic problems of ordinary Americans, with family tears and marital breakdowns as a habitual element, although in his plot approaches he used to flutter hope and the desire that the difficulties described end happily resolved, a decidedly romantic and hopeful look.
Deep down, autobiographical elements did not cease to resonate in his work, whether they were those he saw in his parents, or those of his own married life, where he came to recount five marriages, the first with the dancer Joan Baim, whom he lost in 1973 due to bone cancer, with whom he had two children plus one adopted from a previous relationship with Baim. How he started from his own sentimental ups and downs for his stories gives an idea of his marriage twice with the actress Diane Lander, the writer believed in the fight to save love, which was reflected in his fictions.
Neil Simon’s early writing, some with his brother Danny, was for radio and television shows, where other comedians like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner were struggling to break out. But his desire was to write plays, although a certain insecurity and desire for perfection made him dedicate almost three years to “Come Blow Your Horn”, successfully released on Broadway in 1961. He did not participate in its film adaptation, titled in Spanish. Gallardo and skull (1963), and starring Frank Sinatra. From then on he will regularly participate in adaptations of his plays, such as the fantastic Barefoot in the Park (1967), with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford ., and The Odd Couple (1968), with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau .
His involvement in the cinema led him to write original scripts for titles such as The Charms of the Big City (1970), A Corpse for Desserts (1976) or The Goodbye Girl (1977) and California Suite (1978), the latter with Herbert Ross behind the camera. A singular project was Nights in the City (1969), a musical directed by Bob Fosse inspired by Fellini ‘s Nights of Cabiria .
In the 80s and 90s, he did not stand out as much in cinema, although there are noteworthy titles such as Forbidden to want (1993), an adaptation of his work “Lost in Yonkers”, which was his definitive consecration in the theater. Instead, despite reuniting Lemmon and Matthau three decades later, The Odd Couple, Again (1998) did not have the charm of the original.
Simon was an author who managed to connect with the general public, something that certain detractors did not forgive him, considering that his secret lay in concessions to easy sentimentality. The truth is that he skillfully moved on the razor’s edge, since he was optimistic and realistic, funny and tragic, and many spectators recognized in his gaze the pathos of the human condition.