Why Neil Simon was ‘the perfect troubadour’ for middle-class America

John Yang:

Finally tonight, remembering one of the country's most prolific playwrights and, for decades, one of the most commercially successful.

Jeffrey Brown has our look at the career of Neil Simon, who died Sunday at 91.

Jeffrey Brown:

For much of the 1960s and '70s, Neil Simon was the name that lit up Broadway marquees and dominated popular comedy with rapid-fire jokes and portraits of urban anxiety.

His breakthrough play in 1963 was "Barefoot in the Park," later turned into a movie starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda as newlyweds.

Jane Fonda:

You're always dressed right. You always look right. You always say the right thing. You're very nearly perfect.

Robert Redford:

That's a rotten thing to say.

Jane Fonda:

Before we were married, I thought you slept with a tie.

Robert Redford:

No, just for very formal sleeps.

Jeffrey Brown:

"The Odd Couple," about two mismatched divorcees, became his biggest hit. The film version starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.

Walter Matthau:

Now, kindly remove that spaghetti from my poker table.

Jack Lemmon:

It's not spaghetti. It's linguine.

Walter Matthau:

Now it's garbage.

Jeffrey Brown:

In the Broadway rehearsals for the show, directed by Mike Nichols, Simon felt a scene had fallen flat. Years later, he told The New York Times of a lesson he had learned.

Neil Simon:

I said, "What happened, Mike?"

He said, "It's funny, but they don't like what's happening. They like these people, and you're making them go in a way that is not — not really good for them."

So I changed that. And we got less laughs, but more cheers for the — for the play. So I started to learn about it, that it's not all about the laughter. It's about the feelings that the audience gets.

Jeffrey Brown:

In 1966, Simon had for Broadway shows running simultaneously. And between 1965 and 1980, his plays and musicals racked up more than 9,000 performances.

He'd honed his comedy chops early as a member of the famous writers room for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows."

Simon found new acclaim in the 1980s for an autobiographical trilogy of plays, starting with "Brighton Beach Memoirs" starring Matthew Broderick. He received for Tony Awards, the last for his 1991 play "Lost in Yonkers," which also brought him the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

Neil Simon died on Sunday in New York from complications of pneumonia. He was 91 years old.

And for more on the work and legacy of Neil Simon, I'm joined by Peter Marks, theater critic for The Washington Post.

Peter, thanks for joining us.

What made Neil Simon so successful? What chord did he strike in his time?

Peter Marks:

Well, he was — Jeffrey, he was the perfect troubadour for the middle classes in the '60s and '70s.

He understood so well that regular people wanted to see their problems portrayed on stage and screen. And I think he came along at a time when no longer was the idea of survival, barely surviving the question that most Americans were worrying about, as much it was getting along with the people in their family.

He was from a Depression generation that had gotten through the Depression and World War II. And now they had moved into a more comfortable world. And I think that what he portrayed in those wonderful comedies especially was the way in which we can get on each other's nerves, and that these can be, maybe to everyone else, as funny as they seem to us.

And, in fact, he had a skill at escalating those problems into mini-operas.

Jeffrey Brown:

Yes, did you have a — we just watched a couple of clips. Did you have a favorite — favorite anecdote or favorite scene or favorite play?

Peter Marks:

Well, you always go back to the greatest play, which I think was "The Odd Couple." That is the seminal Neil Simon play.

And I just remember the war that he created, this wonderful war between these two divorced men forced to live together, essentially. I mean, it really was the portrait of a marriage — the opposite of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" or "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — a comic side.

And I just remember this great scene that — in which — in the movie version, Matthau's Oscar and Lemmon's Felix are talking about Oscar's complete disgust with Felix's tidiness. And at one point, he talks about leaving. And he gives the reason to Lemmon's Unger.

He says, "Felix, I really don't think two single men living in an eight-room apartment should have a cleaner apartment than my mother."

(LAUGHTER)

Peter Marks:

And I thought that that was kind of like — that distilled for people the essence of what he was getting at about getting along with people.

Jeffrey Brown:

We just have a short time.

Just thinking about the whole career, very prolific, but that meant missed, as well as hits. And there's a lot been written about how perhaps the humor — tastes change, the humor went out of style, the critical acclaim that didn't — that didn't come and then did come.

Where do you see his legacy and the lasting impact?

Peter Marks:

Oh, it's going to be with the comedies.

He tried, Jeffrey, to move into more dramatic forms. He saw the changes himself. His audience was moving on. And there were more serious forms that he wanted to pursue. I think he had some success with those with "Lost in Yonkers" and the trilogy you mentioned.

But he's going to be remembered for the plays that made my mother laugh the loudest.

Jeffrey Brown:

All right, Peter Marks of The Washington Post on the life and times of Neil Simon, thanks very much.

Peter Marks:

You're welcome.