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The older-brother figures who appear repeatedly in his plays, although viewed affectionately, tend to be coarse and loud and pushy. They usually have a gift for success but often lack brains or scope or sensitivity. Above all, they try to remake their younger brothers in their own image. Simon readily admits ambivalence toward these characters—and the brother on whom they are based. "My complicated relationship with Danny stems from the fact that when I was growing up, I saw him as my father. It wasn't until much later that I saw him as a brother. He'd tell me when to go to bed, how to behave, give me all the rules of life. He wanted the best for me, and I simply would not be who I am today without him."
Neil, a quick learner who finished high school at 16, became a scholar of comedy, poring over books by humorists. Says he: "It was like going to art school. I'd use how Robert Benchley and Ring Lardner did it as a model." By the end of his teens, he and Danny had landed an audition with Radio Personality Goodman Ace at CBS. Says Simon: "Our assignment was to write a sketch about an usherette at Loew's Pitkin Theater reviewing a movie. We came up with 'Joan Crawford's boyfriend is sent to the electric chair—and she promises to wait for him.' He hired us on the spot." The Simon brothers went on as a team to write for Comics Victor Borge, Buddy Hackett, Jan Murray and Phil Foster. Their first job in television, in 1948, was The Phil Silvers Arrow Show and next came Beat the Clock. In 1953 they joined the smash Your Show of Shows, where they created a renowned sketch about a cuckoo clock gone haywire, with Imogene Coca as a clockworks figure ladling water nonstop onto Sid Caesar, who never responds.
In the early days, Danny Simon was not only the dominant brother but sometimes seemed the more gifted one. Neil was so shy that he hardly spoke up and was often assumed to be a tagalong, his brother's way of picking up a second salary. Director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Sweet Charity), one of Simon's longtime friends, recalls that Neil talked so little in those days that "it was always questionable what he did." The Simon team broke up by 1956 in large part, Neil says, because "I needed my own voice." Danny headed to Hollywood to become a TV director, and both undertook to write plays. Danny's Trouble-in-Law got produced first, in 1959 on the prestigious U.S. Steel Hour, but to pallid reviews. Neil's Come Blow Your Horn opened in 1961 and ran 84 weeks on Broadway. Says Neil: "There was a certain rivalry between us. It took him a long time to say 'That's the greatest play I ever saw.' The sibling rivalry stopped when my mother died in 1977—there was no one to compete for. Since then, we have become really good friends."
Eugene, a young man facing his dream opportunity, a chance to write a sketch for CBS radio that must be ready by morning, is explaining why he doesn 't want to stay home and work. He has met a girl, "and you only get one chance in your life of meeting a perfect girl." His brother Stanley, whose interest in women is considerably less spiritual, asks, "You know how many perfect girls there are in Hollywood?" Then he demands, "Are you willing to risk everything for a girl you might not even be interested in by next week?" The starry-eyed Eugene replies, "I'll be interested in her for the rest of my life."