Word: neils
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Marvin Neil Simon was born July 4, 1927. He grew up not in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, but in Washington Heights at the northern end of Manhattan. The family never had much money, he says. "There were definite class distinctions depending on where you lived. People next to the park who got a breeze in summer were considered wealthy. All of our rooms faced walls or the backs of houses." Simon's father Irving, like the father in the trilogy, worked in the garment industry. Recalls Simon: "Like Willy Loman, he learned to ingratiate himself with his customers. He wasn...
...Neil Simon is America's foremost stage comedist, the theatrical equivalent of Woody Allen in the movies. Even in his weakest plays that gift of laughter has never faltered, and it is in full flower in his trilogy. But for all its exuberant humor, Broadway Bound is a comedy only in the sense that Chekhov meant Uncle Vanya to be seen as a comedy. Its subjects include the dissolution of two marriages, the estrangements of a father from a daughter and of another father from his sons, the terminal cancer of one offstage character and the accidental death of another...
...most conspicuous thing about Simon's father was his absence: his marriage was stormy, and he was often away for protracted periods, leaving his wife Mamie and the boys, Neil and Danny, who was eight years older, to fend for themselves. Says Simon: "Each time he came back I thought, 'At last, we're together.' But it kept on like a yo-yo." Mamie Simon was resourceful: she worked at Gimbel's department store; she ran poker games in the house and took a cut of each pot. At the hardest times Neil and his mother were taken...
Throughout Neil's childhood and adolescence, the strongest male influence in his life was his older brother Danny. From the start, Danny believed in his kid brother's limitless potential. According to Simon, Danny endowed him with the nickname "Doc"?an appellation for which there have been more interpretations than the Rosetta Stone?at age two. Neil was playing with a toy stethoscope, and Danny burst out, "This kid is gonna be a doctor." As Neil grew up, Danny enthusiastically envisioned him as America's greatest baseball player and, later, the world's foremost comic genius. He backed...
...star in (notably 1977's The Goodbye Girl), part of the problem was career conflict. There were other tensions, about which they are enigmatic. "Marsha was starting to find new ways to express herself in her life and her work," Simon says. Mason remains attentive and admiring. Says she: "Neil is totally honest. He doesn't edit much, which can be a problem for someone living with him, but I'd rather have that than someone who doesn't communicate at all. We've come to a relationship that is very comfortable for all of us, and I have...