Simon Said

The long-lived - but shrinking - cadre of peerless talent from the golden age of television comedy was diminished when Neil Simon died August 26 at age 91. In the 1950s, Simon was part of the gifted writing teams for the landmark sketch comedy series "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour."

Neil Simon appeared pensive in this 1966 photograph.

First and foremost, Neil Simon was famed as a prolific Broadway playwright. Heralded as the most commercially successful playwright of the 20th century, if not all time, his first play, 1961's "Come Blow Your Horn," ran for 678 performances. That was followed in 1963 by "Barefoot in the Park," which earned first-time director Mike Nichols a Tony Award. In 1965, Simon's "The Odd Couple" garnered Nichols another Tony Award (he would win two more for directing plays by Simon), as well as a Tony for the playwright. The three plays made Simon a national celebrity and, according to Susan Koprince, author of Understanding Neil Simon, "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."

A fruitful collaboration: Neil Simon and Mike Nichols

When "The Star Spangled Girl" opened in 1967, joining the current productions of "Barefoot in the Park," "The Odd Couple," and "Sweet Charity," Simon became only the second playwright, in over a half century, to have at least four shows on Broadway at the same time. Among his prodigious output of over 30 plays were, to name but a handful, "Plaza Suite," "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," "The Sunshine Boys," "Biloxi Blues," and "Lost in Yonkers." The winner of three Tony Awards, he would say he was driven not so much by a desire to make money or see his name in lights on a theater marquee as by the sheer release he found in writing.

Simon adapted 18 of his plays for film and television. He also wrote 11 original scripts not based on his stage work, among them "The Out-of-Towners," "The Heartbreak Kid," "The Goodbye Girl," "Murder by Death," and "The Cheap Detective." Four of his screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards.

Neil Simon's Great Depression-era childhood was unhappy mainly due to his parents' stormy marriage. Simon said that among the reasons he became a writer was to fulfill a need to become independent of his emotional family problems. He noted, "I think part of what made me a comedy writer is the blocking out of some of the really ugly, painful things in my childhood and covering it up with a humorous attitude...do something to laugh until I was able to forget what was hurting."

As an escape from difficulties at home he frequently lost himself in movie theaters, finding delight in silent comedies starring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. Simon recalled, "I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud." These comedies inspired him to write comedy. He said, "I wanted to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out."

Simon began writing his own comedy for money while in high school, where at the age of 15, he and older brother Danny created funny sketches for employees at department store events. After graduating from high school, he joined the Army Air Force Reserve and was sent as a corporal to Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, where he started writing as a sports editor.

He eventually found himself employed as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Bros. offices in Manhattan, a job he quit to write radio and television scripts with his brother. From Simon's mid-teens to his 20s, he and his brother cranked out jokes for nightclub comedians and sketches for TV shows. Eight years older, Danny Simon was Neil's only sibling. Danny became a mentor and father figure for Neil. Simon recalled in a 1986 interview in Time magazine, "He'd tell me when to go to bed, how to behave, give me all the rules of life. He wanted the best for me, and I simply would not be who I am today without him."

In their later years, Danny Simon posed with Neil.

Television and Broadway impresario Max Liebman hired the brothers as writers for the NBC variety series "Your Sow of Shows." Originally airing from 1950 to 1954, "Your Show of Shows" has subsequently been hailed as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. The incomparable Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca headlined a cast that featured Carl Reiner and Howard Morris. Coca had been  a popular music and comedy performer on stage and in film shorts, while Caesar was a former saxophonist in dance bands in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains, where he was also allowed to perform comedy. Head writer Mel Tolkin oversaw a storied staff that included, alongside the Simon brothers, Mel Brooks, Caesar himself, and others.

Howard Morris, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Carl Reiner
get drenched in a sketch on "Your Show of Shows."

Sid Caesar followed "Your Show of Shows" with "Caesar's Hour," which was broadcast from 1954 to 1957. Nanette Fabray replaced Imogene Coca as Caesar's comedic foil (Coca had gone off to star in her own short-lived variety series) in a cast that reunited Caesar with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris. Reiner and Morris were also contributing writers, along with, among others, Caesar, Mel Tolkin, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart (best known as the creator and producer of the TV series "M*A*S*H"), Selma Diamond, Danny Simon, and Neil Simon.

Nanette Fabray is stifled by the stogies stuck in the maws of
Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris in a publicity
photograph from "Caesar's Hour."

On the 1961-1966 sitcom "The Dick Van Dyke Show," the writers' office where Rob Petrie, Buddy Sorrell, and Sally Rogers toiled away on comedy sketches for "The Alan Brady Show" was inspired by the writers' bullpens behind the scenes of "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour," where Carl Reiner, the creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," worked. Van Dyke's character of Rob Petrie was based on Reiner, while Buddy was allegedly modeled on Mel Brooks and Sally on Selma Diamond.

"The Alan Brady Show" producer Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon)
noses in on the writers' office of Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke),
Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie)
in "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Likewise, Mel Brooks, executive producer of "My Favorite Year," said the 1982 comedy was based on his experiences as a writer for "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour." The character of the young comedy writer Benjy Stone, played by Mark Linn-Baker, was a composite of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, who was a writer on a couple of Sid Caesar TV specials in the late 1950s and early '60s.

A bull session of writers, including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen,
and Mel Tolkin, try to ply a reticent Sid Caesar.

In "My Favorite Year," Joseph Bologna's role as comedy star "King" Kaiser represented Sid Caesar (in German, "Kaiser" means the same thing as the Roman title "Caesar"), while Basil Hoffman's character of comedy writer Herb Lee, who whispers most of his dialogue, was loosely based on Neil Simon, who according to coworker Carl Reiner, would whisper his ideas instead of shouting over the din of the noisy writing room.

Nathan Lane starred on Broadway in "Laughter on the 23rd Floor"
as a character inspired by Sid Caesar.

Neil Simon himself drew on his stints with Sid Caesar to create the 1993 play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor." Interestingly, Mark Linn-Baker, who channeled Mel Brooks and Woody Allen in "My Favorite Year," played a character based on Mel Tolkin in the original Broadway production of "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."

Gene Wilder was cast as Sid Caesar's alter ego, Max Prince, in the
1996 London West End production of "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."

Following "Caesar's Hour," from 1958 to 1959, Neil Simon wrote scripts for "The Phil Silvers Show" (also known as "Sgt. Bilko"). A few years later, he created his breakthrough play "Come Blow Your Horn." Simon viewed playwriting as an escape from the creative restrictions of writing for television and as a way to stay in New York when most of his TV contemporaries were decamping to Los Angeles, a community he then disliked.

One thing to be admired about Neil Simon and his television peers is their longevity. Neil was 91 at his passing. Mel Tolkin was 94 at his death in 2007. When he died in 2014, Sid Caesar was 94.

When Sid Caesar's career was waning (a tenth-billed role in the
disaster flick "Airport 1975"), his old friend Mel Brooks cast him
as the Chief of a struggling studio in 1976's "Silent Movie."

Mel Brooks turned 92 this summer, while Carl Reiner is 96. Dick Van Dyke is 92. In 2016, Reiner wrote the book "Carl Reiner, Now You're 94" A Graphic Diary.

The 2017 documentary "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast" found Carl Reiner seeking out several noted nonagenarians, as well as a few centenarians, to ask the question, "What's the secret to living into your 90s - and loving every minute of it?" Among those interviewed were Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, Kirk Douglas, Norman Lear, Stan Lee, Dick Van Dyke, and Betty White.

Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Dick Van Dyke mug for the camera.