BEST NEIL SIMON MOVIES
“After the Fox” (1966):
This Simon-written vehicle for Peter Sellers casts the actor as a master-of-disguise crook who escapes from prison and poses as a movie director to steal a shipment of gold; co-stars included Britt Ekland, then Sellers’ wife.
“Barefoot in the Park” (1967):
Jane Fonda and Robert Redford had their second of several screen teamings in Simon’s tale of newlyweds whose first apartment together challenges their temperamental differences.
“The Odd Couple” (1968):
Not only did Simon score an out-of-the-park movie hit with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s pairing as mismatched roommates Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison, it has fueled several television versions, including the 1970s Tony Randall-Jack Klugman classic.
“The Out-of-Towners” (1970):
In a story Simon wrote directly for the screen (remade in 1999), Lemmon and Sandy Dennis play an Ohio couple experiencing just about every mishap a traveler can encounter in New York.
“Plaza Suite” (1971):
Simon’s frequent movie muse, Matthau has the central male role in each of the three stories set at different times in the same suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel; Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris and Lee Grant are his leading ladies.
“The Heartbreak Kid” (1972):
The tale was adapted for a 2007 remake, but Simon’s imprint is much more on the original version, casting Charles Grodin as a newlywed who falls for another woman (Cybill Shepherd) while he’s on his honeymoon.
“The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1975):
Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft are terrific as a couple thrust into the writer’s “Out-of-Towners” syndrome as New Yorkers plagued by nearly every problem the city can throw at them.
“The Sunshine Boys” (1975):
George Burns became a late-in-life Oscar winner for teaming memorably with Walter Matthau as embittered ex-vaudeville partners maneuvered into a reunion.
“Murder by Death” (1976):
Just about every famous literary detective, from Miss Marple to Charlie Chan, got a send-up in Simon’s star-packed satire of the mystery genre.
“The Goodbye Girl” (1977):
Marsha Mason received a strong screen role from her then-husband Simon, but it was Richard Dreyfuss who won an Oscar for the film, portraying a struggling actor thrown by circumstance into sharing a New York apartment with a single mom (Mason) and her wise-beyond-her-years daughter (Quinn Cummings). Turner Classic Movies shows the picture Sunday, March 3, as part of its “31 Days of Oscar.”