Prolific playwright Neil Simon has died

Neil Simon, the playwright whose comedies dominated Broadway for decades, died Sunday from complications of pneumonia. He was 91. Starting in the 1960s and continuing into the next century, Simon was the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwright. He served as court jester for the middle class, magnifying their frets and foibles into hilarity. “I don’t write social and political plays because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world,” he told The Paris Review in 1992. For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity, and The Star-Spangled Girl. The Odd Couple became a successful TV show and movie, and adaptations of many of his other plays made it to the big screen.

Simon was married five times, twice to the same woman, Diane Lander. His first wife, Joan Baim, died of cancer in 1973, after 20 years of marriage. They had two daughters, Ellen and Nancy, who survive him.