Word Doc
Neil Simon the focus of University Club presentation
STORY AND PHOTO
BY STEPHEN VRATTOS
“He was America’s Shakespeare.”
Thus opened Jon Kenrick, speaking
about Neil Simon, the subject
of the popular lecturer’s latest presentation
for the NST University
Club, Thursday evening, January
31. The assertion may strike some
as attention-grabbing hyperbole,
and given Kenrick’s signature effusive,
flamboyant style, they might be
forgiven for thinking such. But one
should not confuse showmanship
with hucksterism, and in the case
of the teacher, film and musical
theater historian, it is exactly his
love and consuming passion for the
subjects he covers, which prevents
Kenrick from shining anything but
the purist light on all he holds dear;
to quote the aforementioned Bard,
“to hold as twere the mirror up to
nature.”
Kenrick’s Neil Simon paean took
up from his previous lecture, that
honoring Sid Caesar in December.
For it was on the iconic comic’s
“Your Show of Shows” Simon
career took off, after spending his
fledgling writing years teamed with
his brother, penning radio scripts
after the pair completed their military
service in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Born on July 4, 1927, in The
Bronx to Jewish parents Irving
Simon, a garment salesman, and
Mamie, a homemaker, young Neil
had a single sibling, brother Danny,
eight years his elder. He grew up
in Washington Heights during
the Great Depression. Suffering
under the hardship of the time
only exacerbated a childhood made
difficult by his parent’s tempestuous
marriage, no better evinced
than the couple’s separation and
reunification seven times. It was
after the eighth break-up, the split
remained. If anything good can be
said of Simon’s turbulent young life,
it provided the budding playwright
plenty of fodder, which he would
draw from throughout his career.
Though he began his writing
career in radio with brother Danny,
after quitting his job as a mailroom
clerk for Warner Brothers, he soon
turned to the burgeoning television
medium. Thrown into the rich, writing
pool of Caesar’s variety hour,
working beside such luminaries as
Mel Brooks, Wood Allen and Carl
Reiner, he soon earned the nickname
“Doc,” for his wherewithal
in fixing scripts, which had hit a
creative roadblock.
From 1958 to 1961, Simon wrote
for “The Gary Moore Show” and
“The Phil Silvers Show,” as well as
doctoring scripts for Jerry Lewis,
whilst laboring over his first play,
“Come Blow Your Horn.” The play,
which tells the story of a young
man’s decision to leave the home
of his parents for the bachelor pad
of his older brother who leads a
swinging ’60s lifestyle, drew heavily
from Simon’s life, especially the
lead character’s mom and dad. The
show was a hit. It ran 677 performances,
and more importantly,
allowed Simon to leave his fulltime
television writing career for
authoring stage and film scripts.
“Barefoot in the Park” (1963),
which featured Robert Redford
in his stage debut, jump-starting
his career, and “The Odd Couple”
(1965), for which Simon won his
first Tony—both huge successes—
followed. It was after writing the
screenplay for the latter, which featured
original stage Oscar Madison,
Walter Matthau, and celluloid Felix
Unger, Jack Lemmon, replacing Art
Carney, and for which he received
an Academy-Award nomination
in 1968, Simon “made the worst
decision in the history of show business.”
Heeding his agent’s advice,
he sold the rights to all his work
to that point to Paramount for a
quarter of a million dollars. Thus,
Simon never received a penny from
the hit 1970 television series or later
stage and television adaptations, a
move he later estimated cost him
$20 million.
Not long after, Simon lost his
wife Joan Baim to bone cancer.
The two had met the young dancer
at Camp Tamiment, married in
1953 and had two children. It was
Joan’s love of walking barefoot in
Washington Square Park, which
lead to Simon’s penning “Barefoot
in the Park.” He soon found love
again in Marsha Mason, who he
met during the run of Simon’s 1972
play “The Good Doctor,” subsequently
starring alongside Richard
Dreyfuss in the 1973 smash film,
“The Goodbye Girl,” for which
Simon won a Golden Globe and
another Oscar nomination. The
two married in 1973, though it
would only be the second of what
would be five marriages total for the
playwright. Mirroring his mom and
dad’s on-again, off-again relationship,
his third wife, Diane Lander,
he married twice.
Such behind-the-scenes and
personal anecdotes, which Kenrick
peppers throughout his presentations,
along with rare archival photos
and video footage, all delivered
with unbridled ebullience and passion,
are what make the lecturer’s
engagements not-to-be-missed.
Following the 1982 musical
“They’re Playing Our Song,” which
Kenrick confessed contained one of
his favorite scripts for a musical, but
was unfortunately over shadowed
by “Sweeney Todd,” Simon went
back to his roots, penning what
would be a trilogy of plays, based
closely on his life, “Brighton Beach
Memoirs” (1983), “Biloxi Blues”
(1985), for which he finally won
the Tony award, and “Broadway
Bound” (1986). His follow-up,
“Lost in Yonkers” (1991), earned
him his second Tony, as well as the
esteemed Pulitzer Prize.
Kenrick wrapped up the “show”
with a rare clip of Jack Klugman
and Tony Randall—TV’s original
Oscar Madison and Felix Unger—
performing a skit, as a means
of promoting the annual Easter
Bonnet regalia, proceeds of which
benefit Equity Fights Aids, on a
Tony broadcast from the ’80s. The
piece was written by Simon, paying
homage to the classic “Who’s
on First?” routine by Abbot and
Costello, only using the names of
modern musical groups and performers,
such as The Who, Yes,
Yoko Ono and The Doors; a genius
bit of writing, eliciting peals of
laughter from Kenrick’s audience.
“Simon’s passing was the end
of an era…”
Speaker Kenrick with University Club Founder and President, Shirley
Wershba
40 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ March 2019