Library of Congress acquires Neil Simon manuscripts, papers
As Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist at the Library of Congress, was digging through playwright Neil Simon's manuscripts and papers this year, he made a surprising discovery.
Simon, the most commercially successful American playwright of the 20th century, could also draw. Like, really draw.
“They're almost professional,” Horowitz said in a recent phone conversation of some of the pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he found tucked among the scripts. “There are two watercolors in particular that are quite beautiful landscapes.”
More than a dozen notepads filled with drawings, cartoons and caricatures by Simon, who died in 2018, was just one of the surprising discoveries Horowitz made in the trove of approximately 7,700 of the playwright's manuscripts and papers (and even eyeglasses), a collection that the library on Monday announced had been donated by Simon's widow, actress Elaine Joyce.
The collection includes hundreds of scripts, notes and outlines for Simon's plays, including handwritten first drafts and multiple drafts of typescripts — often annotated — as well as handwritten letters to luminaries such as August Wilson. There are more than a dozen scripts (sometimes many more) for some of his most celebrated shows, including “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “The Odd Couple” and “Lost in Yonkers,” Simon's dysfunctional-family comedy that won a Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1991.
An event Monday at the library in Washington was scheduled to include a conversation with actors Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the Broadway revival of Simon's 1968 comedy “Plaza Suite,” as well as remarks by Joyce.