The Styrous® Viewfinder: The Odd Couple

April 21, 2020

February 29, 2020

August 27, 2018

20,000 Vinyl LPs 146: The Odd Couple ~ Neil Simon

The Odd Couple ~ soundtrack - vinyl LP

Neil Simon died yesterday. He was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. Of all of them, my favorite was The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. In 1968 the play was adapted into a film. The roles of misfits Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison were brilliantly cast with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. What a fantastic team they made.

The score for the film was written by Neal Hefti who wrote scores for many other films and television shows.

Neil Simon was born on the fourth of July in 1927, in New York City. He began writing comedy scripts in the 50's for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were the Sid Caesar Your Show of Shows from 1950 (where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond) and The Phil Silvers Show, which ran from 1955 to 1959 (link below).

He wrote his first play, Come Blow Your Horn, in 1961. It ran for 678 performances at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

During 1966, Simon had four shows playing at Broadway theatres simultaneously: Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park.

For most of his career Simon's work has received mixed reviews, with many critics admiring his comedy skills, much of it a blend of "humor and pathos". Other critics were less complimentary, noting that much of his dramatic structure was weak and sometimes relied too heavily on gags and one-liners. As a result, notes Kopince, "literary scholars had generally ignored Simon's early work, regarding him as a commercially successful playwright rather than a serious dramatist. Clive Barnes, theater critic for The New York Times, wrote that like his British counterpart Noël Coward, Simon was "destined to spend most of his career underestimated", but nonetheless very "popular". He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.

Simon died on August 26, 2018, after being on life-support while hospitalized for renal failure. He also had Alzheimer's disease. He was 91. The cause of death was complications with pneumonia, according to his publicist, Bill Evans. Simon died around 1 a.m. Sunday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

Viewfinder links:

Noël Coward
Neal Hefti
Jack Lemmon

Net links:

Neil Simon ~
Theatre
Screenplays
Television

Women's World ~ How Felix and Oscar Made It to the Big Screen
The Telegraph ~ The Odd Couple review

Steyn At Sea ~

one of the great instrumental movie themes of all time

YouTube links:

The Odd Couple - movie trailer
Remembering Playwright Neil Simon
Johnny Carson ~ Neil Simon interview
Charlie Rose ~ Neil Simon interview on "Rewrites" (1996)

The Odd Couple soundtrack

Credits:

    Arranged By, Conductor, Composed By – Neal Hefti
    Art Direction – Christopher Whorf
    Engineer – Bob Doherty
    Liner Notes – Howard W. Koch
    Producer – Tom Mack

Neal Hefti ‎– The Odd Couple (Music From The Original Motion Picture Score)Label: Dot Records ‎– DLP 25862, Dot Records ‎– DLP 25,862
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, Indianapolis
Country: US
Released: 1968
Genre: Non-Music, Pop, Stage & Screen
Style: Soundtrack, Dialogue, Easy Listening, Lounge