Simon, Neil (1927—)
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 commercial...
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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon (born 1927) has become America's most prolific and popular dramatist. His tragicomic plays expose human frailties and make people laugh at themselves.One o...
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"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 wa...
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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 audience...
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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 B...
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Critical Essay by Clifford A. Ridley
“Neil Simon, Boffmeister,” in The National Observer, Vol. 10, No. 46, November 20, 1971, p. 24.
In the following essay, Ridley observes that in T...
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Critical Essay by Helen McMahon
“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 es...
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Critical Essay by Robert K. Johnson
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 ...
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Critical Essay by Brendan Gill
I begin to perceive that I may have been unfair to Neil Simon in pursuing over the years a theory about him which has been, after all, entirely inside my head and not h...
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Critical Essay by John Simon
When will playwrights learn that it takes more than a string of funny lines to make a comedy? Actually, Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady purports to be more than ...
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Critical Essay by Julius Novick
[Simon delightedly immerses] himself in the minutiae of modern American upper-middle-class existence, which no one conveys with more authority—or, anyhow, more ...
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Critical Essay by Howard Kissel
In many ways Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures" … is a fantasy play. It presumes that a daughter who was abandoned by her father at t...
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Critical Essay by Jack Kroll
Everybody has to make a separate peace with Neil Simon. Mine came when I decided he was really an abstract artist who used gags the way Mondrian used little cells of colo...
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Critical Essay by Clive Barnes
To say that I am at a loss for words is merely to put a cliche where my heart should be.
But I truly am at a loss for words. I probably admire Neil Simon more than m...
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Critical Essay by Jack Kroll
"Fools" is Neil Simon's nineteenth play in twenty years—and his weakest. It's a fable about a Ukrainian village whose inhabitants are u...
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Critical Essay by Robert K. Johnson
Simon's mature theater work combines comedy with moments of poignance and insight. Examples abound. In The Odd Couple, Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, althou...
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Critical Essay by Gerald M. Berkowitz
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 wors...
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Critical Essay by Douglas Watt
Is Neil Simon going soft? Or is the prodigiously industrious playwright tapped out? One hopes not, but his latest effort, "I Ought to Be in Pictures," an ...
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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 ...
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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...
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630 Park Avenue that belonged to the late Broadway legend Cy Feuer has sold for $2.3 million. Appropriately, considering the spreadâs artsy but well-groomed Upper East Side luxury,...
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Los Angeles (dpa) - Sharp-witted comedian Billy Crystal is to be
awarded the coveted Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, it was
announced Tuesday.
The star ...
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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 D...
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Broadway and screen actor George Grizzard, who won acclaim, and a Tony Award, for performing in Edward Albee's dramas, has died. He was 79.Grizzard died Tuesday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Corne...
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Broadway and screen actor George Grizzard, who won acclaim, and a Tony Award, for performing in Edward Albee's dramas, has died. He was 79.Grizzard died Tuesday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Corne...
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Broadway and screen actor George Grizzard, who won acclaim, and a Tony Award, for performing in Edward Albee's dramas, has died. He was 79.Grizzard died Tuesday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Corne...
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For Gregory Pavlick and Maryann Sugar, their 52nd birthdays came with bright hopes dashed by darkened Broadway theaters.Both stood disappointed on West 52nd Street after traveling to New York to ce...
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Mel Tolkin, the head writer for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," which defined the art of sketch comedy during television's Golden Age, has died. He was 94.Tolkin died of heart failure on Monday ...
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