soul

of blessed memory

Neil Simon, Celebrated Jewish-American Playwright, Dies At 91

GERRI MILLER JEWISH JOURNAL OF GREATER L.A.

A

Neil Simon

ward-winning playwright and
screenwriter Neil Simon passed
away on Saturday, Aug. 25,
2018, in New York, due to complica-
tions of pneumonia.
The Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe and
Pulitzer Prize winner had worldwide
success with such enduring plays as
The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park,
The Sunshine Boys, Plaza Suite, Lost

Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss in a scene from the 1977 film The Goodbye Girl. The
movie received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, and Dreyfuss won an Oscar.

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August 30 • 2018

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in Yonkers, and the trilogy based on
his Jewish childhood and early career,
Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues
and Broadway Bound.
Simon adapted many of his com-
edies for the movies and also wrote
original scripts for films, including The
Out-of-Towners, The Goodbye Girl and
Murder by Death.
Simon was born in the Bronx, New
York, to Irving Simon, a garment
salesman, and Mamie (Levy) Simon, a
homemaker. He got his start in televi-
sion, writing in the late 1950s for Sid
Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and The
Phil Silvers Show, winning Emmys for
both. His 1997 autobiography, The Play
Goes On: A Memoir, was a best seller.
His last play was Rose’s Dilemma in
2003, and in 2006, he won the Mark
Twain Prize for Humor at the Kennedy
Center.
Simon, who lived in Manhattan,
was married five times. His first wife,
dancer Joan Baim, whom he married
in 1953, died of cancer in 1973. He met
actress Marsha Mason at an audition
and they were married four months
later. He wrote about their relation-

ship in the play Chapter Two, which
was made into a movie starring Mason
and James Caan.
“It’s my favorite play for many rea-
sons,” Mr. Simon once said of Chapter
Two. “It was cathartic for me. In the
two years Marsha and I were married,
I gave her a rough time — still trying
to hold on to my relationship with
Joan. Marsha is beautiful and talented,
and I found ways to find fault with her.
One night in California, everything
erupted into a terrible fight. I realized
then what I was doing. That’s how I
wrote the play.”
After his divorce from Mason, he
married the actress Diane Lander
in 1987. They divorced a year later
but remarried in 1990, then divorced
again. Simon married the actress
Elaine Joyce in 1999. She survives him,
along with his daughters Ellen Simon
and Nancy Simon from his first mar-
riage, and his daughter Bryn Lander
Simon from his marriage to Lander.
He is also survived by three grand-
children and one great-grandson. Neil
Simon’s older brother, Danny Simon,
died in 2005. •