Poignancy and a Punch Line

NEW YORK If there was one place Neil Simon never had the slightest desire to find himself, it was on a stage.

Some writers are vicarious actors who would jump at the chance to speak their own precious words, but Simon cannot be counted among them. Hell for this prolific playwright would be an auditorium with a spotlight and microphone pointed eternally in his direction.

He's afflicted with a peculiar variety of comedy-writer shyness. He needs an audience -- just not one that's ogling the personal merchandise. He was once offered a tiny cameo in one of the 30 or so movies he's written; he merely had to stand at the bar at Elaine's, the celebrated New York writers' watering hole. Grudgingly, he took his spot at the bar. The results did not displease him: "They cut it," he says, flashing half a smile.

Years ago, he did appear on a stage. He and his elder brother, Danny, had been hired as sketch writers at a Catskills hotel. Twenty bucks a week for 10 weeks. Danny said, "We need someone to introduce a sketch as a cowboy," and ordered Simon the younger to volunteer.

Squeamish Mr. Borscht Belt Wannabe, in a ten-gallon hat? "I've never been on a stage!" Simon protested. His brother was unmoved. "I came out with a stupid cowboy outfit on." The audience was amused but not in a way that endeared Simon to the limelight. The young writer simply did not enjoy subjecting himself to the crowds whose approval he so clearly desired.

Reticence clings to Simon to this day. Not in conversation, though: He is a cooperative raconteur about his life in theater and the movies. At 79, he's living in Manhattan full time again, getting his daily fix of the pad and pen. (He still writes only in longhand.) For tonight, at least, he will have to put the writing in the drawer and suppress some of that natural shyness, as the guest of honor at the Kennedy Center, where he will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Performers who owe some or even most of their success in show business to his words -- from Robert Redford (who starred in the 1963 Broadway production of "Barefoot in the Park") to Richard Dreyfuss (winner of the 1977 Best Actor Oscar for "The Goodbye Girl") -- are scheduled to participate. The proceedings will be broadcast Nov. 20 on PBS.

The prize, initially given in 1998, is one of the few high-profile laurels in this country reserved for those who think life is a joke. Surprisingly, Simon is the first full-time writer for the stage so honored. (Steve Martin, last year's recipient, is a comic actor who's written several plays.) Given that the award's namesake was an author with a wicked wit, the recognition of Simon gives this year's ceremony a special aptness. For the record clearly shows that over the past 50 years, few in the worlds of letters and entertainment have taken firmer hold of our laugh reflex than the writer born Marvin Neil Simon.

The most successful playwright in Broadway history is not O'Neill or Miller or Williams, but this Bronx-bred second son of a traveling salesman, with a gift for making audiences laugh at the myriad ways that neurotic human beings get on each other's nerves. Think of Oscar and Felix of "The Odd Couple," or the newlyweds of "Barefoot," or the cranky retired gag team of "The Sunshine Boys," or the bickering family unit of "Brighton Beach Memoirs." In his most popular works, Simon often explores the notion that the closer people grow, the funnier the opportunity they have to rub one another the wrong way.

He honed his funnyman skills in the 1950s in what was perhaps the wittiest work environment ever created -- the rooms in which Sid Caesar's sketch-comedy TV series "Your Show of Shows" was written by Simon, brother Danny and such other giants-in-training as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Woody Allen.

Later, Simon would turn his gifts to the stage, where his plays would win a Pulitzer Prize and three Tony Awards. At the peak of his career, his comedies routinely moved from stage to screen, a medium for which he developed other memorable projects, such as "The Heartbreak Kid" and "The Goodbye Girl." It is Broadway, however, that made his career, and to which he feels the strongest bond.

"Barefoot" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs," each with 1,530 performances, are on the list of the longest-running Broadway plays ever. Not far behind are "Plaza Suite" (1,097), "The Odd Couple" (964) and "Chapter Two" (857), as well as "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" and "Lost in Yonkers" (780 each). The last of these, a more bittersweet story with both comedy and pathos, garnered him the Pulitzer in 1991. Simon is the only living playwright with a Broadway theater named for him.