Commander Wallace
08-27-18, 07:27 PM
Quote: Neil Simon, the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning author of such plays as “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and “Lost in Yonkers,” who died Aug. 26 at 91, was often called the world’s most popular playwright after Shakespeare.
Time magazine proclaimed him the “patron saint of laughter.” His shows, with an arsenal of sarcastic wit, became highly entertaining staples of high school and community theaters, and they popped up on stages as far away as Beijing and Moscow. But mostly, he dominated Broadway like no other playwright of the past half-century.
In the late 1960s and again in the mid-1980s Mr. Simon had four shows on Broadway simultaneously, the only times since Avery Hopwood (https://www.press.umich.edu/16432/avery_hopwood) in the 1920s that a playwright had achieved such a feat. His mind was a ceaselessly creative engine, turning out original movie scripts and screen adaptations of his own plays at a fantastic clip. “And I work at the post office during Christmas,” he quipped.
His crowning early comic achievement was “The Odd Couple” (1965), which became a hit film and TV sitcom and introduced two characters now embedded in pop culture: the sloppy, fun-loving Oscar Madison and the fussy neatnik Felix Ungar. The friends — one divorced, the other about to be — share a New York apartment and bicker like spouses.
hit film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VO2NcQl2-g)and TV sitcom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1h4ibpKJA)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/neil-simon-broadways-long-reigning-king-of-comedy-dies-at-91/2018/08/26/74a02eba-a7fc-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?utm_term=.2befe43149b7
Rest in peace and thanks for all the laughs.
Time magazine proclaimed him the “patron saint of laughter.” His shows, with an arsenal of sarcastic wit, became highly entertaining staples of high school and community theaters, and they popped up on stages as far away as Beijing and Moscow. But mostly, he dominated Broadway like no other playwright of the past half-century.
In the late 1960s and again in the mid-1980s Mr. Simon had four shows on Broadway simultaneously, the only times since Avery Hopwood (https://www.press.umich.edu/16432/avery_hopwood) in the 1920s that a playwright had achieved such a feat. His mind was a ceaselessly creative engine, turning out original movie scripts and screen adaptations of his own plays at a fantastic clip. “And I work at the post office during Christmas,” he quipped.
His crowning early comic achievement was “The Odd Couple” (1965), which became a hit film and TV sitcom and introduced two characters now embedded in pop culture: the sloppy, fun-loving Oscar Madison and the fussy neatnik Felix Ungar. The friends — one divorced, the other about to be — share a New York apartment and bicker like spouses.
hit film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VO2NcQl2-g)and TV sitcom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1h4ibpKJA)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/neil-simon-broadways-long-reigning-king-of-comedy-dies-at-91/2018/08/26/74a02eba-a7fc-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?utm_term=.2befe43149b7
Rest in peace and thanks for all the laughs.