Ron Leibman. Linda Lavin. Neil Simon and wife.

Famous actor in theater, television and films. Film Year Title Role Notes 1970 Where's Poppa? Sidney Hocheiser Film debut 1972 The Hot Rock Murch 1972 Slaughterhouse-Five Paul Lazzaro 1973 Your Three Minutes Are Up Mike 1974 The Super Cops David Greenberg 1976 Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood Rudy Montague 1979 Norma Rae Reuben 1980 Up the Academy Major Vaughn Liceman Uncredited Nominated – The Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst Supporting Actor 1981 Zorro: The Gay Blade Esteban The Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst Supporting Actor The Stinkers Bad Movie Award for Worst On-Screen Couple (shared with Brenda Vaccaro) 1983 Phar Lap Dave Davis 1983 Romantic Comedy Leo 1984 Door to Door Larry Price 1984 Rhinestone Freddie Ugo Nominated – Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor 1988 Seven Hours to Judgment David Reardon 1996 Night Falls on Manhattan Morgenstern 1999 Just the Ticket Barry the Book 2002 Personal Velocity Arvam Herskowitz Also known as Personal Velocity: Three Portraits 2002 Dummy Lou 2002 Auto Focus Lenny 2004 Garden State Dr. Cohen 2010 A Little Help Warren Dunning Television Year Title Role Notes 1956 The Edge of Night Johnny Television debut 1963 The DuPont Show of the Week Carmatti Episode: "Ride with Terror" 1963 Ride with Terror Carmatti Television movie 1966 Hawk Eddie Toll Episode: "The Man Who Owned Everyone" 1975 The Art of Crime Roman Grey Television movie 1975 Police Story Ray Oberstar Episode: "Vice: 24 Hours" 1977 Martinelli, Outside Man Richie Martinelli Television movie 1978 A Question of Guilt Detective Louis Kazinsky Television movie 1978–79 Kaz Martin 'Kaz' Kazinsky Series regular [18] / also writer; 23 episodes Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series 1980 Linda in Wonderland Unknown Television movie 1981 Rivkin: Bounty Hunter Rivkin Television movie 1985 Comedy Story Joey Caruso Episode: "Side by Side", also writer 1986 Many Happy Returns Jerry Brenner Television movie 1986 Christmas Eve Morris Huffner Television movie Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or a Motion Picture Made for Television 1987 ABC Afterschool Specials Sam Greene Episode: "Class Act: A Teacher's Story" 1988 Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Sam Ajami Simon Resnick Television movie 1988 Aaron's Way Unknown Episode: "The Men Will Cheer and the Boys Will Shout" 1990–92 Murder, She Wrote Darryl Heyward / Roland Trent 2 episodes 1991–92 Pacific Station Detective Al Burkhardt Series regular; 13 episodes 1992 Fish Police Voice, Episode: "The Codfather" 1995 Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man Geofredo Episode: "Papa Oom M.O.W. M.O.W. 1995–96 Central Park West Allen Rush Voice, Series regular; 21 episodes 1995–2000 Law & Order Barry Nathanson / Mark Paul Kopell 2 episodes 1996–2004 Friends Dr. Leonard Green Recurring role; 4 episodes [18] 1996 Rugrats Rabbi / Old Man Voice, Episode: "Chanukah" 1997 Don King: Only in America Harry Shondor Television movie 1998–2002 Holding the Baby Stan Peterson Series regular; 13 episodes 2001 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Stan Villani Recurring role; 4 episodes 2003 The Practice Attorney Robert Colby Episode: "Concealing Evidence" 2006 The Sopranos Dr. Lior Plepler Recurring role; 3 episodes 2013–16 Archer Ron Cadillac Voice, Recurring role; 9 episodes Stage Year Title Role Notes 1959 Camino Real Kilroy 1959 Legend of Lovers Orpheus 1959 A View From the Bridge Rudolfo 1960 Dead End Unknown 1960 The Premise Unknown 1963 Dear Me, The Sky is Falling Peter Nemo 1963 Bicycle Ride to Nevada Rip Calabria 1964 The Deputy Captain Slazer 316 performances 1965 The Misanthrope Alceste 1965 Uncle Vanya Astrov 1965 End Game Clov 1965 The Critic Mr. Puff 1965 Galileo Unknown 1966–67 Room Service Gordon Miller 1967 The Poker Session Teddy 1967–68 Prometheus Bound Hermes 1967–68 Volpone Mosca 1967–68 The Three Sisters Solyony 1968 We Bombed in New Haven Sergeant Henderson 85 performances 1968 Long Day's Journey into Night Unknown 1969 Cop-Out Performer 1970 Room Service Gordon Miller 1970 Transfers Performer 1975 Love Two Performer 1976 Rich and Famous Various Roles 1976 Julius Caesar Cassius 1977 Richard III Richard III 1980–81 I Ought to Be in Pictures Herb 324 performances 1982 Children of Darkness Count LaRuse 1983 Don Pasquale Don Pasquale 1985 Doubles Lennie 277 performances 1986 Tartuffe Tartuffe 1988–90 Rumors Lenny Ganz 535 performances 1993 Angels in America: Millennium Approaches Roy Cohn Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play 1994 Angels in America: Perestroika Nominated – Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play 1995 The Merchant of Venice Shylock Nominated – Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play 1998 A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds Rabbi Azriel Nominated – Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play 1999–2000 Adam Baum Sam Baum 2001 A Connecticut Yankee Launcelot 2002 God of Vengeance Jack Chapman

By Charles Isherwood Aug. 26, 2018 Neil Simon, the playwright whose name was synonymous with Broadway comedy and commercial success in the theater for decades, and who helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 91. His death, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, was announced by his publicist, Bill Evans. The cause was complications of pneumonia. Early in his career, Mr. Simon wrote for television greats, including Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar. Later he wrote for the movies, too. But it was as a playwright that he earned his lasting fame, with a long series of expertly tooled laugh machines that kept his name on Broadway marquees virtually nonstop throughout the late 1960s and ’70s. Beginning with the breakthrough hits “Barefoot in the Park” (1963) and “The Odd Couple” (1965) and continuing with popular successes like “Plaza Suite” (1968), “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1971) and “The Sunshine Boys” (1974), Mr. Simon ruled Broadway when Broadway was still worth ruling. From 1965 to 1980, his plays and musicals racked up more than 9,000 performances, a record not even remotely touched by any other playwright of the era. In 1966 alone, he had four Broadway shows running simultaneously. He also owned a Broadway theater for a spell in the 1960s, the Eugene O’Neill, and in 1983 had a different Broadway theater named after him, a rare accolade for a living playwright. For all their popularity with audiences, Mr. Simon’s great successes in the first years of his fame rarely earned wide critical acclaim, and Broadway revivals of “The Odd Couple” in 2005 and “Barefoot in the Park” in 2006 did little to change the general view that his early work was most notable for its surefire conceits and snappy punch lines. In the introduction to one of his play collections, Mr. Simon quoted the critic Clive Barnes as once writing, “Neil Simon is destined to remain rich, successful and underrated.” But Mr. Simon gained a firmer purchase on critical respect in the 1980s with his darker-hued semi-autobiographical trilogy, “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1983), “Biloxi Blues” (1985) and “Broadway Bound” (1986). These comedy-dramas were admired for the way they explored the tangle of love, anger and desperation that bound together — and drove apart — a Jewish working-class family, as viewed from the perspective of the youngest son, a restless wisecracker with an eye on showbiz fame. Mr. Simon’s military experience inspired “Biloxi Blues,” a 1985 play with Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck. It was the second in the trilogy that included “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1983), and “Broadway Bound” (1986). “The writer at last begins to examine himself honestly, without compromises,” Frank Rich wrote of “Biloxi Blues” in The New York Times, “and the result is his most persuasively serious effort to date — not to mention his funniest play since the golden age” of his first decade. In 1991, Mr. Simon won a Tony Award as well as the ultimate American playwriting award, the Pulitzer Prize, for “Lost in Yonkers,” another autobiographical comedy, this one about a fiercely withholding mother and her emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped daughter. It was also his last major success on Broadway. Mr. Simon and Woody Allen, who both worked in the 1950s writing for Mr. Caesar (along with Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner, among others), were probably equally significant in shaping the currents of American comedy in the 1960s and ’70s, although their styles, their favored mediums and the critical reception of their work diverged mightily. Mr. Simon was the populist whose accessible, joke-packed plays about the anxieties of everyday characters could tickle funny bones in theaters across the country as well as in 1,200-seat Broadway houses. Mr. Allen was the darling of the urban art-house cinema and the critical classes who created comedy from the minutiae of his own angst. But together they helped make the comedy of urban neurosis — distinctly Jewish-inflected — as American as the homespun humor of “Leave It to Beaver.” Mr. Simon’s early plays, often centered on an antagonistic couple of one kind or another wielding cutting one-liners in a New York apartment, helped set the template for the explosion of sitcoms on network television in the 1970s. (The long-running television show based on his “Odd Couple” was one of the best, although a bum business deal meant that Mr. Simon earned little money from it.) A line can be drawn between the taut plot threads of Mr. Simon’s early comedies — a slob and a neatnik form an irascible all-male marriage in “The Odd Couple,” newlyweds bicker in a new apartment in “Barefoot in the Park,” a laid-off fellow has a meltdown in “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” — and the “nothing”-inspired, kvetching-character-based comedy of the seminal 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld.” Mr. Allen and Mr. Simon, who shared roots in the urban Jewish lower middle classes, were also united by the classic funnyman’s ability to inspire belly laughs by the millions in other people while managing to find the dark clouds hovering insistently over their own fates, however apparently successful they might seem. Mr. Simon once wrote of approaching Mr. Allen in a restaurant when both men were at the height of their success to offer congratulations on Mr. Allen’s “Manhattan.” How was he feeling? “Oh, all right,” Mr. Allen answered. Mr. Simon wrote, “When I saw his dour expression, I saw my own reflected agony.” This, when Mr. Simon himself had two hit shows on Broadway, another play ready for rehearsals and two movies set for production. Agony is at the root of comedy, and for Mr. Simon it was the agony of an unhappy Depression-era childhood that inspired much of his finest work. And it was the agony of living in Los Angeles that drove his determination to break free from the grind of cranking out jokes for Jerry Lewis on television and make his own name. As he wrote in his 1996 autobiography, “Rewrites” (the first of two volumes), the plush comforts of Hollywood living might extend your life span, but “the catch was when you eventually did die, it surely wouldn’t be from laughing.”