Seven Things to Know About Neil Simon

1. In a 1979 interview in Playboy, Neil Simon noted: "There are two million interesting people in New York and only seventy-eight in Los Angeles."

2. Simon and Stephen Sondheim once considered collaborating on a musical version of The Front Page. Simon wrote in his memoir The Play Goes On: "The one thing you look for in a musical is why people actually sing songs, a piece of advice that Stephen Sondheim had given me years earlier when I suggested that he and I do a musical version of The Front Page...'(It's) a great play, said Stephen, but why do they sing?' I looked him right in the eye and said, 'I haven't the slightest idea--except that you write such incredible songs.' 'Not without good reason,' said Stephen wisely, and instead of writing with him, I decided to enjoy just listening to everything he wrote without me getting in his way."

3. One of Neil Simon's least successful plays was The Gingerbread Lady (1970), which starred Maureen Stapleton as an alcoholic actress. Although Stapleton won a Tony for Best Actress, the play's original run was just over five months. Ten years later, Simon adapted it for the screen as Only When I Laugh, which earned Oscar nominations for his then-wife Marsha Mason (Best Actress), James Coco (Best Supporting Actor), and Joan Hackett (Best Supporting Actress).

4. Of his first play Come Blow Your Horn, Simon recalled: "(It) took the equivalent of the combined hours, months, and years I put in writing The Red Buttons Show, the Sgt. Bilko Show, Caesar's Hour, and finally The Garry Moore Show, a weekly variety program on CBS which featured a bright new and dazzingly funny comedienne, Carol Burnett. I would come in at eight o'clock in the morning and work on my play for two hours, typing on Garry Moore's stationery, before tackling the Carol Burnett sketches at ten o'clock. Not only was Garry unknowingly subsidizing me while I worked for him, but he eventually became one of the first investors in Come Blow Your Horn, so he eventually got the money back for the typing paper I "borrowed" from him, and then some."

5. Neil Simon was married five times. He met his first wife, Joan Baim, when she was a children's counselor at a Poconos resort; Simon and his brother contributed to weekly revue shows at the same resort. Joan died in 1973 following a long battle with cancer. Simon met his second wife, actress Marsha Mason, when she auditioned for his play The Good Doctor in 1973. They divorced ten years later, but remained friends. His third and fourth marriages were to actress-model Diane Lander, who was 24 years younger than him. Knowing Simon's propensity to write about his own life, one of the conditions of their pre-nuptial agreement was that Neil not write about her or her daughter during her lifetime. Neil married Elaine Joyce in 1999; they were together until his recent death.

6. Simon's brother Danny, who was eight years older, brought Neil (whose nickname was Doc) into show business. Danny also inspired one of Neil's most successful plays when he divorced his wife and moved into an apartment with another divorced man. Recognize the premise of The Odd Couple?

7. Neil Simon has won three Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize (Lost in Yonkers), and the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He earned four Oscar nominations for Best Writing (The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl, and California Suite. He also received four Emmy nominations (two for Caesar's Hour and one each for TV adaptations of Broadway Bound and Laughter on the 23rd Floor).

This post is part of The Neil Simon Blogathon hosted by Caftan Woman and Wide Screen World.

Love in the 1970s: Avanti, The Goodbye Girl, and Harold and Maude

Lemmon and Mills = great chemistry.

Avanti! (1972)
Director: Billy Wilder   
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, and Clive Revill.
One of Wilder’s last films stars Lemmon as an uptight American businessman who journeys to a small Italian town to retrieve the body of his father, who died in a car accident. To his surprise, Lemmon learns that his father was having an affair—secretly meeting his lover in the same hotel every August for the past ten years. Furthermore, Dad’s mistress died in the same accident and her daughter (Mills) shows up for the funeral. After a very leisurely opening, this quirky love story turns on the charm…helped immeasurably by the scenic setting, memorable music, the two leads, and Clive Revill’s delightful performance as a hotel manager who can solve any problem. Juliet Mills—Hayley's sister and John's daughter—also shines in a rare lead role (although it's a bit jarring to see the former star of TV's "Nanny and the Professor" go for a swim in the buff). The instantly hummable song “Sensa Fine” (translated as “Never Ending”) has been played in numerous films before and since, but it’s hard to imagine it being put to better use. The film’s title is Italian for “proceed,” the response given when someone requests to enter one’s room. It’s the same response you should offer if given an opportunity to see this delicious postcard from one of the cinema’s most versatile filmmakers. 

Dreyfus (and the back of Mason's head).

The Goodbye Girl (1977)
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason, and Quinn Cummings.
Playwright Neil Simon penned this winning romantic comedy as a vehicle for his then-wife Marsha Mason. She plays the title character, a single mother recently jilted by her latest lover. To make matters worse, she learns that her NYC apartment has been subleased to Dreyfuss, a struggling actor. Once they reluctantly agree to share the flat, it’s only a matter of time before love blossoms. Simon wisely keeps sentiment to a minimum, while allowing his outwardly brash characters to reveal their inner insecurities. Mason is good, if a bit too theatrical, but Dreyfuss hits all the right notes in his Oscar-winning performance. Quinn Cummings, as Mason’s wise-beyond-her-years daughter, delivers most of Simon’s trademark zingers. She, Mason, Simon, and the film all earned Oscar nominations. David Gates, formerly of the rock group Bread, wrote and performed the memorable title tune, which peaked at #15 on the Billboard chart.

Harold and Maude (1971) 

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, and Charles Tyner.

Harold, a 20-year-old man obsessed with death, befriends and eventually falls in love with Maude, a 79-year-old woman with a zest for life. This offbeat blend of dark comedy and romance tries much hard to be quirky, which may account for its commercial failure when originally released. But it became a midnight movie favorite with college crowds by the late 1970s and has subsequently enjoyed status as a classic cult film. Ironically, the movie’s funniest scenes—Harold’s fake suicides and the blind dates arranged by his mother—don’t even involve Maude. Cort, looking as pale as humanly possible, and Gordon give likable performances, but director Ashby drags the film down with too many montages set to Cat Stevens songs. Harold’s Jaguar hearse rates among the cinema’s most memorable automobiles. Gordon essentially reprised her character in Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose. A year earlier, Cort starred in the genuinely bizarre Brewster McCloud as a young man obsessed with building wings and taking flight in Houston's Astrodome—a plot with cult film potential written all over it, though the picture sank into obscurity.