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Neil Simon, Celebrated Writer for the Stage and Screen, Dies at 91

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Neil Simon, the pioneering playwright who set a new tone in theatrical comedy with such shows as The Odd Couple and captured the spirit of the middle-class American family with plays like Lost in Yonkers, has died. He was 91.

Simon, who boasted more combined Oscar (four) and Tony (17, winning three times) nominations than any other writer, died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia at NewYork-Presbyterian hospital in Manhatan, publicist Rick Miramontez said.

With a career that spanned five decades and more than 40 plays, many of which he also adapted for the screen, Simon is arguably the most commercially successful American playwright in history.

The only playwright to have four Broadway productions running simultaneously (that was in the 1960s, when he was earning a reported $60,000 a week), Simon earned countless other awards, including the Mark Twain Prize for Comedy in 2006 and Kennedy Center Honors in 1995.

A master of the set-’em-up, knock-’em-down style of comedy, Simon helped build the sitcom form as a writer on such 1950s hits as Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and The Phil Silvers Show. However, it was for the stage that Simon honed his quintessential style and invented the stage dramedy, extracting humor out of daily life. His unrelenting wisecracks and approachable tone made him an audience favorite.

“Neil has the ability to write characters — even the leading characters that we’re supposed to root for — that are absolutely flawed,” Jack Lemmon, who starred as Felix Ungar in the 1968 film adaptation of Simon’s The Odd Couple, once said of the writer. “They have foibles. They have faults. But, they are human beings. They are not all bad or all good; they are people we know.”

Born Marvin Neil Simon in the Bronx on July 4, 1927, he grew up in Washington Heights during the Great Depression. His father, Irving, was a garment salesman and his mother, Mamie, a homemaker. His parents’ financial difficulties affected their marriage, and Simon’s childhood was an unhappy one. He graduated at age 16 from DeWitt Clinton High School, where he earned the nickname “Doc.”

May He Rest In Peace.