Neil Simon is a master of comedy and one of the most popular dramatists in the history of the American theater. His plays, which range from light romantic comedy and farce to drama, have entertained Broadway audiences for nearly four decades and have...

One of America's most popular and prolific playwrights is Neil Simon. Having seventeen Broadway productions to his credit, as well as screenplays and television scripts, Simon has entertained audiences for over twenty years. He has been hailed as the...

"When I was a kid," playwright Neil Simon tells Tom Prideaux of Life, "I climbed up on a stone ledge to watch an outdoor movie of Charlie Chaplin. I laughed so hard I fell off, cut my head open and was taken to the doctor, bleeding and laughing.... My...

Since the early 1960s, Broadway has almost never been without a Neil Simon hit play, which has earned the prolific New Yorker the title of the world's most commercially successful playwright. In his earlier work, with such hits as The Odd Couple...

Neil Simon (born Marvin Neil Simon July_4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City), is a American playwright and screenwriter. He is one of the most reliable hitmakers in Broadway history, as well as one of the most performed playwrights in the world. From...

Billy Crystal will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.He's the 10th recipient of the award, given annually by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It'll be presented Oct. 11 at a tribute performance that will be televised by PBS."The...

A former actor in the Tony-winning Broadway musical "Hairspray" has sued the show's producers for $1.5 million, claiming they wrongfully fired him after he had surgery on a knee he injured during a performance.Joel Vig, 54, who played the roles of the Principal, Mr. Spritzer,...

630 Park Avenue that belonged to the late Broadway legend Cy Feuer has sold for $2.3 million. Appropriately, considering the spread’s artsy but well-groomed Upper East Side luxury, it sold to a former Vogue editor, Gloria Schiff. Feuer, who died last year at age 95,...

Today is Wednesday, July 4, the 185th day of 2007. There are 180 days left in the year. This is Independence Day.Today's Highlight in History:On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.On this date:In 1802, the United States Military Academy officially...

Neil Simon, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 16-22, 34-42, 43-51. In the following excerpts, Johnson argues that the third act of The Odd Couple, is flawed because Simon has created such fully realized characters that he is unable to manipulate them convincingly for the happy ending he has contrived. Johnson also states that in Plaza Suite Simon is showing that outward success may not be enough, and that Last of the Red Hot Lovers does not meet the challenge it sets for itself to mediate the conflict between se...

“A Rhetoric of American Popular Drama: The Comedies of Neil Simon,” in Players Magazine, Vol. 51, No. 1, October, 1975, pp. 11-15. In the following essay, McMahon argues that Simon introduces serious themes in his plays, which challenge accepted attitudes and practices, only to later trivialize them and reinforce a conservative status quo.

Neil Simon is a critical embarrassment. It is bad enough that he is commercially the most successful dramatic writer of the past decade, but to make matters worse no one is quite sure why his comedies are such triumphs. It is very easy to point out the qualities that Simon's writing lacks; indeed, when placed up against any conventional checklist of "characteristics of great comedy," his plays are likely to fail on every count. Every count but one, that is; the fact is indisputable that...