Renowned playwright, screenwriter, and author Neil Simon, whose work on The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and The Sunshine Boys firmly cemented his status as one of the most influential and prolific comedy screenwriters of the 20th century, passed away on August 26, 2018. His death was announced by his publicist, Bill Evans, who cited the cause as complications from pneumonia. He was 91. 

Marvin Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 and grew up in New York City during the Great Depression. In order to escape the unhappy home life brought on by the economic depression, Simon found solace in movie theaters where he enjoyed early comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. 

“I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud,” Simon once recalled. Adding that he “wanted to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out.”

Turning this dream into a reality, Simon began writing a series of comedy sketches for an annual department store event when he was only 15. To help further develop his natural talent for the medium, Simon would spend long periods in the library reading books by famous humorists such as Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and S.J. Perelman. After graduating high school, Simon was briefly drafted with the Army Air Force Reserve at New York University. During this time, Simon worked as a sports editor, before being assigned to Colorado as a corporal where he also attended the University of Denver.

Eventually, Simon and his brother Danny, began writing for such comedy series as The Robert Q. Lewis Show, The Phil Silvers Show, and Your Show of Shows. The latter of which earned Simon two Emmy Award nominations. Transitioning to Broadway, Simon’s first play, Come Blow Your Horn, ran for 678 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 1961. He quickly followed this with Barefoot in the Park in 1963 and the Tony award-winning play The Odd Couple in 1965. Now considered “the hottest new playwright on Broadway,” Simon had four shows playing at Broadway theaters in 1966, simultaneously. These included Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park. 

In 1972, Simon began his professional association with producer Emanuel Azenberg with The Sunshine Boys. This partnership continued on such favorites as The Good Doctor, God’s Favorite, Chapter Two, They’re Playing Our Song, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Jake’s Women, The Goodbye Girl, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor. His later work on the autobiographical plays Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound earned the playwright his greatest critical acclaim. He followed these with Lost in Yonkers in 1991, for which Simon was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. 

Outside of the stage, Simon also wrote screenplays for more than 20 films, including original work such as misadventure comedy The Out-of-Towners, the detective spoof Murder by Death and the romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl. Several of his screenplays were adaptations of his own plays, such as the critically acclaimed adaptation of The Odd Couple starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and the Matthew Broderick-led Biloxi Blues. 

Throughout his decades-long career, Simon has won several Emmy, Tony and Writers Guild of America awards, as well as a Golden Globe Award, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, American Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame and received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. 

Simon married his fourth wife, actress Elaine Joyce in 1999. She survives him, along with his daughters Ellen Simon and Nancy Simon from his first marriage to Joan Baim and his daughter Bryn Lander Simon from his third marriage to actress Diane Lander. He is also survived by three grandchildren and one great-grandson.