Marvin Neil Simon

Marvin Neil Simon was born in the Bronx, in New York, on the Fourth of July in 1927. His father Irving, a garment salesman, disappeared from time to time, leaving his wife, Mamie, to support their two sons by workindepartment store and by relying on family and friends. After his parents divorced, Simon lived with relatives in Forest Hills, New York. Simon received the nickname "Doc" as a child because he was always pretending to be a doctor, listening to people's heartbeats with a toy stethoscope (an instrument used to listen to sounds inside the body). He also loved comedy films and was often thrown out of movie theaters for laughing too loudly.Simon and his older brother Danny were very close. During their teens, they wrote and sold material to stand up comedians and radio shows. It was his brother who encouraged him to pursue writing while in the United States Army Air Force Reserve program. Simon also attended college at this time. His childhood love of comedy stuck, and his writing was inspired by the work of his favorite comics—Robert Benchley (1889–1945) and Ring Lardner (1885–1933).After being discharged (let out) from the army, Simon got a job in Warner Brothers mailroom—thanks to his brother, who worked in the publicity department. They began working together again, and from 1947 to 1956 they wrote comedy for television shows starring Jackie Gleason (1916–1987) and Phil Silvers (1911–1985). Simon continued writing comedy after his brother quit to become a television director, and his work appeared on some of television's top shows. The pleasure was fading, however, so he began writing plays in 1960.Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, was a modest hit. It was followed shortly.thereafter with Barefoot in the Park, which ran on Broadway for four years. His third play, The Odd Couple, introduced two famous characters, Felix and Oscar, two men with failing marriages who move in together to save money and find that they have the same problems living with each other as they did with their wives. Simon's storylines usually presented conflicts between two people and were filled with funny one-liners.Simon admitted