Barefoot In The Park
March 27 - April 11, 2009

Barefoot's Broadway Production History

Biltmore Theatre, NYC
(10/23/1963 - 6/25/1967)
Preview: Oct 21, 1963
Total Previews: 2
Opening: Oct 23, 1963
Closing: Jun 25, 1967
Total Performances: 1,530

The play, a comedy inspired by the early days of Neil Simon's first marriage, was the playwright's third effort, and his first major hit. The Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, opened on October 23, 1963 at the Biltmore Theatre, where it ran for 1530 performances, making it Simon's longest running show. The cast included: Robert Redford as Paul, Elizabeth "Evening Shade" Ashley as Corie, Mildred Natwick as Mrs. Banks, and Kurt "Waiting For Godot" Kasznar as Velasco. Replacements during the run included future "Brady Bunch" Dad Robert Reed, and Tony Roberts as Paul, and Joan van Ark as Corie, Eileen Heckart as Mrs. Banks, and Jules "On The Town" Munshin as Velasco. Mike Nichols won the Tony Award for Best Director of a Play, and nominations went to Neil Simon for Best Play, and Elizabeth Ashley for Best Actress in a Play.

Revival: Cort Theatre, NYC
(2/16/2006 - 5/21/2006)
Preview: Jan 24, 2006
Total Previews: 26
Opening: Feb 16, 2006
Closing: May 21, 2006
Total Performances: 109

After 26 previews, a Broadway revival directed by Scott Elliott opened on February 16, 2006 at the Cort Theatre, where it ran for 109 performances. The cast included: Patrick Wilson as Paul, Amanda Peet as Corie, Jill Clayburgh as Mrs. Banks, and Tony Roberts as Velasco (Robert Redford's replacement as Paul in the 1964 original B'way production). Efforts to contemporize the characters clashed with the addition of a 1960's soundtrack featuring tunes by Petula Clark and the Byrds. The critics found it to be dated and lacking humor.

Barefoot On Film

Barefoot in the Park
Directed by Gene Saks
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
Written by Neil Simon
Starring Robert Redford, Jane Fonda,
Mildred Natwick, and Charles Boyer
Music by Neal Hefti
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date: May 25, 1967
Budget: $2 million
Gross revenue: $19,994,515

Barefoot in the Park was adapted to the screen in 1967 by Casablanca producer, Hal Wallis. The film's screenplay was by Neil Simon. Gene Saks directed Robert Redford, reprising his Broadway role of Paul, and a post-Cat Ballou and pre-Viet Nam Jane Fonda as Corie, who replaced Broadway's Elizabeth Ashley. Mildred Natwick reprised her stage role as the bride's mother, and Charles Boyer is featured as the eccentric upstairs neighbor. The lead female role had been offered to Natalie Wood who had already played opposite Robert Redford in two movies. Wood declined the offer because she wanted to take time off. Natwick was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Fonda was nominated for a BAFTA as Best Foreign Actress, and Simon received a nod from the Writers Guild of America.

Simon Says

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marvin Neil Simon was born in the Bronx, in New York, on the Fourth of July in 1927. His father Irving, a garment salesman, disappeared from time to time, leaving his wife, Mamie, to support their two sons. After his parents divorced, Simon lived with relatives in Queens, New York. Simon received the nickname "Doc" as a child because he was always pretending to be a doctor, listening to people's heartbeats with a toy stethoscope. He also loved comedy films and was often thrown out of movie theaters for being inappropriate and laughing too loudly.

Simon and his older brother Danny were very close. During their teens, they wrote and sold material to standup comedians and radio shows. It was his brother who encouraged him to pursue writing while in the United States Army Air Force Reserve program. Simon also attended college in Colorado at this time.

After being discharged from the army, Simon got a job in Warner Brothers' mailroom thanks to his brother, who worked in the publicity department. They began working together again, and from 1947 to 1956 they wrote comedy for television shows starring Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers. Simon continued writing comedy after his brother quit to become a television director, and his work appeared on some of television's top shows. The pleasure was fading, however, so he began writing plays in 1960. Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, was a modest hit. It was followed shortly thereafter with Barefoot in the Park, which ran on Broadway for four years. His third play, The Odd Couple, had a two-year run on Broadway, won Simon his first Tony Award, and was adapted into both television and film versions.

In the 1970s Simon made an effort to add depth to his work by treating serious issues with comic touches. He presented works such as The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, the story of a married man in a mid-life crisis who has a series of affairs; and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, which witnesses the nervous breakdown of a recently fired business executive.

Simon continued to create characters who struggled to handle their feelings in difficult situations and who released tension with humor. He began to share more of himself and his life, including boyhood dreams of escaping from his family problems and the difficulty of coping with his wife's terminal illness. During this period he wrote The Sunshine Boys, The Good Doctor, California Suite, and Chapter Two.

Simon took his mixing of honesty and humor to new levels in the 1980s. Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first in a trilogy of semiautobiographical plays, tells the story of a middleclass Jewish American teenager growing up in a troubled family. Biloxi Blues deals with the boy's coming of age and facing of anti- Semitism in the army. Broadway Bound takes audiences into the boy's young adulthood, as he struggles to establish his career and sees the problems in his parents' relationship more clearly. Simon claimed that writing the play helped him address problems he had with his mother.

When Simon's third marriage broke up, he wrote Jake's Women, in which he introduces good and bad experiences of two marriages and their effect on the third. He began the 1990s with Lost in Yonkers, a painfully funny story about the effect an abusive mother has on her grown children. The play was a success, and in 1991 it earned the highly coveted Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Simon's next work, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, was a behind-the-scenes look at writing comedy for early TV in the 1950s. Simon received Kennedy Center honors in 1995 from President Bill Clinton for his contribution to the arts and to popular culture in the twentieth century.

In 1999 Simon was honored by ringing the bell to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange, which honored leaders of the twentieth century whose achievements enrich humanity. As President Clinton remarked of Simon when presenting him with the Kennedy Center honors, "He challenges us to never take ourselves too seriously. Thank you for your wit and the wisdom."

Neil Simon Comic Timeline

• 1955 - Your Show of Shows
• 1956 - The Phil Silvers Show / Sgt. Bilko
• 1957 - Caesar's Hour, Emmy nominee, Best Writing
• 1958 - The Garry Moore Show
• 1958 - Caesar's Hour, Emmy nominee, Best Comedy Writing
• 1961 - Come Blow Your Horn, first Broadway play
• 1963 - Little Me, Tony nominee, Best Author / Best Musical
• 1964 - Barefoot in the Park, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1965 - The Odd Couple, Tony Award, Best Author
• 1966 - Sweet Charity, Tony nominee, Best Musical
• 1968 - Plaza Suite, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1969 - The Odd Couple, Academy Award nominee
• 1969 - Promises, Promises, Tony nominee, Best Musical
• 1970 - Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1971 - The Out of Towners, Writers Guild Award
• 1972 - The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1973 - The Sunshine Boys, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1974 - The Good Doctor, Tony nominee
• 1976 - The Sunshine Boys, Academy Award nominee
• 1978 - Chapter Two, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1979 - They're Playing Our Song, Tony nominee, Best Book
• 1985 - Biloxi Blues, Tony Award, Best Play
• 1987 - Broadway Bound, Tony nominee, Best Play
• 1989 - American Comedy Awards, Creative Achievement
• 1991 - Lost in Yonkers, Tony Award, Best Play; Pulitzer Prize
• 1992 - Broadway Bound, Emmy nominee
• 2001 - Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Emmy nominee
• 2006 - The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

Barefoot In The Park Dramaturgy © 2009, Ross Harmon: The Barn Players

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