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Marvin Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He has written more than thirty plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.〔 Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, and giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve after graduating from high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were ''The Phil Silvers Show'' and Sid Caesar's ''Your Show of Shows'' in 1950, where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond. He began writing his own plays beginning with ''Come Blow Your Horn'' (1961), which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successful plays, ''Barefoot in the Park'' (1963) and ''The Odd Couple'' (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."〔 During the 1960s to 1980s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films actually based on his plays. His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays showing on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor. After Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1991 for ''Lost in Yonkers'', critics began to take notice of the depths, complexity and issues of universal interest in his stories, which expressed serious concerns of most average people. His comedies were based around subjects such as marital conflict, infidelity, sibling rivalry, adolescence, and fear of aging. Most of his plays were also partly autobiographical, portraying his troubled childhood and different stages of his life, and he created characters who were typically New Yorkers and often Jewish, like himself. Simon's facility with dialogue gives his stories a rare blend of realism, humor and seriousness which audiences find easy to identify with. ==Early years== Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Irving Simon, was a garment salesman, and his mother, Mamie (Levy) Simon, was mostly a homemaker.〔http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/theater-and-dance/19232/neil-simon-unbound〕 Simon had one older brother by eight years, Danny Simon. He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the period of the Great Depression, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School when he was sixteen, where he was nicknamed "Doc" and described as extremely shy in the school yearbook.〔Konas, Gary (editor) (1997). ''Neil Simon: A Casebook'', Garland Publishing〕 Simon's childhood was difficult and mostly unhappy due to his parents' "tempestuous marriage" and financial hardship caused by the Depression.〔Koprince, Susan (2002) Fehrenbacher, ''Understanding Neil Simon'', University of South Carolina ISBN 1-57003-426-5.〕 He would sometimes block out their arguments by putting a pillow over his ears at night.〔Grobel, Lawrence. "Playboy Interview with Neil Simon", ''Playboy Magazine'', Feb., 1977〕 His father often abandoned the family for months at a time, causing them further financial and emotional hardship. As a result, Simon and his brother Danny were sometimes forced to live with different relatives, or else their parents took in boarders for some income.〔 During an interview with writer Lawrence Grobel, Simon stated: "To this day I never really knew what the reason for all the fights and battles were about between the two of them ... She'd hate him and be very angry, but he would come back and she would take him back. She really loved him."〔Grobel, Lawrence, ''Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives'', Da Capo Press (2001).〕 Simon states that among the reasons he became a writer was to fulfill his need to be independent of such emotional family issues, a need he recognized when he was seven or eight: "I'd better start taking care of myself somehow . . . It made me strong as an independent person.〔 To escape difficulties at home he often took refuge in movie theaters, where he especially enjoyed comedies with silent stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. Simon recalls: "I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud." Simon attributes these childhood movies for inspiring him to some day write comedy: "I wanted to make a whole audience fall onto the floor, writhing and laughing so hard that some of them pass out."〔Johnson, Robert K., ''Neil Simon'', Twayne Publishers, Boston (1983).〕 He appreciated Chaplin's ability to make people laugh and made writing comedy his long-term goal, and also saw it as a way to connect with people. "I was never going to be an athlete or a doctor."〔 He began creating comedy for which he got paid while still in high school, when at the age of fifteen, Simon and his brother created a series of comedy sketches for employees at an annual department store event. And to help develop his writing skill, he often spent three days a week at the library reading books by famous humorists such as Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman and S. J. Perelman.〔 Soon after graduating high school he signed up with the Army Air Force Reserve at New York University, eventually being sent to Colorado as a corporal. It was during those years in the Reserve that Simon began writing, starting as a sports editor. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver〔 from 1945 to 1946.〔("On this day: Neil Simon is born" ) ''The Jewish Chronicle Online'', accessed October 25, 2011.〕〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Neil Simon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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