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What pleases the Western audiences, apart from the crisp gags, is the smug conviction that California has captured the great Neil Simon and thus is one up on New York. But it is not quite that simple. Simon has not succumbed to California; he has just borrowed it. He asks: "How can I be a turncoat when everything about me—all the baggage I've accumulated since my birth—is pure New York?" In Manhattan, Simon lived in a comfortable East Side townhouse. Now he has a massive electronic gate blocking the entrance to the ten-room house, gardens and pool that he shares with his second wife, Actress Marsha Mason, and his two daughters, Ellen, 19, and Nancy, 13. He gets his New York Times every Sunday to keep in touch —but the Times is not the New York he misses. "There's no ambience in Los Angeles," he complains, "and no sidewalks. No place to walk to, no strolling or window-shopping. I love sunshine, but there have been times when I've looked up into another one of those endless cloudless days and told God, 'O.K., enough already. Can't you arrange for a drizzle?' "
His prayer unanswered, Simon last week packed a bag and lit out for the New York opening of California Suite. Said he: "To tell the truth, I'm really looking forward to it. I need a fix." To tell the truth, so does Broadway.