Neil Simon's 'The Odd Couple'

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature grade: 13 Dresden Technical University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik) course: American Comedies language: English abstract: I am a creature controlled by some cruel fate that had twisted and warped my personality so that at the first sign of personal involvement I became transformed from human being into the most feared and dangerous beast on earth the observer-writer says Neil Simon calling himself a monster who finds himself totally involved in situations and then suddenly and without warning steps back to watch the proceeding. Some call Simon Broadway's most successful playwright others in commercial terms the most successful dramatist in the American theatre and probably in the history of the world. Fact is he has had dozens of plays produced and has been showered with more Academy and Tony nominations than any other writer. Born on July 4 1927 Marvin Neil Simon grew up in Manhattan and shortly attended New York University and the University of Denver. His most significant job came in the early 1950s when he started writing for television comedy series. By the 1960s Simon had begun to concentrate on writing plays for Broadway. His first hit was 'Come Blow Your Horn' in 1961. Throughout his career Simon has drawn extensively on his own life and experience for materials for his plays. The author's milieu is middle-aged middle class New York [ neighborhoods he knows well from when he was a child] and he builds much of his humor on the familiarity of that world to his audience. But Simon is probably best known for his characters Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar from his 1965 playwright 'The Odd Couple'. Neil Simon's fabulously funny creation The Odd Couple started out in 1965 as a Broadway play became a movie in 1968 and then was adapted for TV by ABC in 1970 remaining on screen for five years and more than a hundred episodes as