Danny Simon, a veteran comedy writer who was a member of the fabled writing staff of Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" and the inspiration for many of the characters in his younger brother Neil's famous plays, has died. He was 86.
Simon died Tuesday of complications after a stroke at the Robison Jewish Health Center in Portland, Ore., his family said.
Teaming up with his brother in the 1940s, Simon wrote material for comics such as Buddy Hackett, Jan Murray and Phil Silvers. The Simons also wrote for various radio shows and for television shows such as "Broadway Open House" and the Red Buttons and Jackie Gleason shows, as well as "Your Show of Shows."
After the brothers split up as a writing team in 1954, Danny Simon became head writer on "The Colgate Comedy Hour" and later on Danny Thomas' "Make Room for Daddy."
He also wrote for shows such as "My Three Sons," "The Carol Burnett Show," "The Mac Davis Show," "The Kraft Music Hall," "The Facts of Life" and "Diff'rent Strokes" as well as jokes for Joan Rivers' guest-host appearances on "The Tonight Show."
As a director, his credits include many off-Broadway productions of his brother's plays.
"He was a very, very good man," Caesar told The Times on Wednesday. "He knew his business, he knew comedy, and he worked at it diligently. He really was such a dedicated man."
Writer-producer Larry Gelbart, who wrote a failed TV pilot with Neil and Danny Simon in the 1950s, said that, as a comedy writer, Danny Simon "was among the best."
"He thought about comedy a lot more than the average comedy writer thought about it," Gelbart told The Times. "He had definite ideas about what made a line funny, what made a play funny. A lot of people credit him with being terribly influential in their careers."
Woody Allen is one of them. Simon hired the young joke writer to write sketches on what was then called "The Colgate Variety Hour."
"I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon," Allen once said.
There's no question that Simon was a major influence on his brother Neil's career. They not only wrote together for about nine years, but Danny Simon-like characters showed up in successful Neil Simon plays such as "Come Blow Your Horn," "The Odd Couple," "Plaza Suite," "Chapter Two," "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound."
