Neil Simon
New interviews with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, footage from the reunion of Caesar's Writers (1996), and sketches from Your Show of Shows (1950) and Caesar's Hour (1954).
Brazilian adaptation of the Broadway classic starring Claudia Raia and filmed live in São Paulo
Musical dancer on the way out (at 36) Paula McFadden had it swell with actor Tony DeSanti, but instead of taking her to Hollywood he gets a European movie part. He even sublets their (his) New York apartment to Elliot Garfield, who generously lets her stay, even keeping the master bedroom. Pragmatic pre-teen daughter Lucy soon takes to his charm, but Paula remains determined to hate all actors. Despite the stress of a Broadway Shakespeare lead he must play too queer for Frisco, he's determined to snatch romance from ingratitude.
A collection of Ceasar's finest comedy moments.
Inspired by Neil Simon's early career experience as a junior writer for Your Show of Shows, the play focuses on Sid Caesar/Jackie Gleason-like Max Prince, the star of a weekly comedy-variety show circa 1953, and his staff, including Simon's alter-ego Lucas Brickman, who maintains a running commentary on the writing, fighting, and wacky antics which take place in the writers' room
One of the greatest comedians of early television, Sid Caesar hasn't had his work shown in perennial reruns, so it's especially gratifying to see a collection of his classic sketches released on video, with Caesar himself introducing the material. Besides being a truly gifted comic, Caesar benefited from having some brilliant supporting players, including Carl Reiner, Imogene Coca, and Nanette Fabray. Some of his illustrious writers, including Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks, appear in interviews setting up the sketches. The sketches themselves include some all-time classics such as Caesar and company playing the figurines populating a medieval town clock (a brilliant bit partly written by Neil Simon and his brother, Danny, who reminisce after the sketch).
The Big Daddy of televised comedy sketches, Sid Caesar had millions of Americans holding their sides and howling at his uproarious antics and those of his inspired sidekicks--Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. These are compilations of fan favorites--digitally remastered to be as crisp as they were in the 1950s. "The Fan Favorites" includes gems from the heyday of live TV, as well as interviews with writers and actors, including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon. 3-3/4 hours on 3 cassettes or 3 DVDs. Set 1 features live gut-busters from "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour", including 18 of Caesar's own favorite sketches, plus revealing interviews with contemporaries, including Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. Three digitally remastered volumes: "The Magic of Live TV, Inside the Writer's Room," and "Creating the Comedy". Almost 4 hours on 3 cassettes or 3 DVDs.
The Big Daddy of televised comedy sketches, Sid Caesar had millions of Americans holding their sides and howling at his uproarious antics and those of his inspired sidekicks--Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. These are compilations of fan favorites--digitally remastered to be as crisp as they were in the 1950s. "The Fan Favorites" includes gems from the heyday of live TV, as well as interviews with writers and actors, including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon. 3-3/4 hours on 3 cassettes or 3 DVDs. Set 1 features live gut-busters from "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour", including 18 of Caesar's own favorite sketches, plus revealing interviews with contemporaries, including Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. Three digitally remastered volumes: "The Magic of Live TV, Inside the Writer's Room," and "Creating the Comedy". Almost 4 hours on 3 cassettes or 3 DVDs.
Neil Simon discusses the writing and making of his film "Murder by Death".
Robert Osborne hosts this TCM original featuring an exclusive interview with the original Odd Couple.
30 years after the first film, Oscar and Felix embark on a road trip together, to attend the wedding of Oscar's son to Felix's daughter.
Two aging comedians who acrimoniously dissolved their act eight years earlier must overcome their differences when they have the chance for a lucrative movie comeback.
Jack Lemmon made over sixty films and received numerous awards, including eight Academy Award Nominations and two Oscars. Later in life, his achievement was enriched by new challenges in which he exposed the vulnerability and emotion of the later years as few had dared. He reveled in his ongoing screen partnerships with directors like Billy Wilder and stars like Walter Matthau. Narrated on-camera by Jack Lemmon, this documentary includes interviews with Lemmon's son, the actor Chris Lemmon. Also appearing are such legends as Jack's life-long friend, the writer and director Billy Wilder, writer-director Garson Kanin, drama teacher Uta Hagen, and actor Gregory Peck. Actors Charles Durning, Maureen Stapleton, Betty Garrett, and Kevin Spacey, writer Neil Simon, director Delbert Mann, and other Hollywood luminaries help complete the profile. Clips from some of Lemmon's major films as well as archival footage add to this portrait of one of our most illustrious and productive stars
Jake is a writer. He is married to Maggie, but his marriage is in trouble. He cannot stop thinking about other women in his life, characters he invents conversations with. He is constantly talking to: his deceased wife Julie, his daughter Molly, his sister Karen, and his psychiatrist Edith. All he does is have imaginary conversations with real people that are at the moment out of his life. Maggie cannot stand his mind wandering off all the time and decides to separate for six months and at the end of six months they will decide whether or not to remain together. Jake has a few girl friends, but spends the six months, while waiting for Maggie, only talking to these imaginary people, and a few times to real people.
In the summer of 1942 two young boys are sent to stay with their stern grandmother Kurnitz and their childlike aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York.
Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" is the Final Chapter of his acclaimed trilogy that began with "Biloxi Blues" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs".
Charley Pearl, wealthy heir and gadabout, is slated to marry Adele, the daughter of a Hollywood tycoon. But, during a wild bachelor party in Las Vegas, Charley strikes up a flirtation with nightclub crooner Vicki Anderson that soon leads to her bedroom. When the couple are discovered by Vicki's beau, infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel, he makes a surprising pronouncement -- they'd better marry, or Charley is a dead man.
A documentary profile of director/choreographer Bob Fosse. Includes clips from his films and television specials as well as interviews with Fosse, remembrances from his friends, and commentary by Gwen Verdon. A Dance in America presentation, broadcast as part of Great Performances.
Jack Lemmon is honored by the AFI with a Life Achievement Award hosted by Julie Andrews featuring clips from his films and reminiscences from co-workers.
During the Second World War, Eugene enlists in the US Army during the last year of the War and is sent to basic training in Biloxi Mississippi. There he must live with a variety of fellow soldiers while enduring the whims of a mentally unstable drill sergeant.
Hilarity abounds in this portrait of three couples successively occupying a suite at the Plaza.
Eugene, a young teenage Jewish boy, recalls his memoirs of his time as an adolescent youth. He lives with his parents, his aunt, two cousins, and his brother, Stanley, whom he looks up to and admires. He goes through the hardships of puberty, sexual fantasy, and living the life of a poor boy in a crowded house.
Darryl Palmer (Michael O'Keefe) is a major league baseball player who meets and pursues an attractive singer (Rebecca De Mornay). After some setbacks, the two are married and sent on an emotional journey that sees his career take off, while hers doesn't. When she gives up her dreams to support her husband, she can't escape her own unhappiness. With a separation on the horizon, Darryl must choose between his big-league life and his one true love.
A writer for a greeting card company learns the true meaning of loneliness when he comes home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man.
An English teacher and struggling single mother has her life disrupted when the father who abandoned her as a child comes back into her life.
HBO filmed version of the Neil Simon play (filmed in front of a live audience) has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Lee Grant and Jerry Orbach playing three roles.
HBO Standing Room Only presentation of the 1981 stage revival. From the Neil Simon Book. New Yorkers Paul Bratter and Corie Bratter née Banks have just gotten married. He is a stuffed shirt just starting his career as a lawyer. She is an independently minded free spirit who prides herself on doing the illogical purely out of a sense of adventure
Grandmother has nothing to say when Libby tells her that she is off to LA to look up Dad, a Hollywood screenwriter. Grandmother has been in a New York cemetery for six years and Dad has been out of Libby's life for 16 of her 19 years. Libby arrives in LA on a Tuesday and phones Dad the one night that Stephanie, who does Jane Fonda's hair, stays over. Stephanie is there the next morning when Libby decides she needs to tell her story face-to-face.
A boozy Broadway actress comes out of a 12-week cure to face the problems of her best friends as well as her needy daughter. She tries to balance the terrors of returning to work with the demands of all around her with humor and insight, while staying off the booze.
Writer Nick Gardenia is kidnapped from his California cliffhouse and forced to rob a bank. Now a fugitive, he seeks help from his ex, Glenda. She is a public defender remarried to a prosecutor, and we get a houseful of hijinks.
George Schneider is an author whose wife had just died. His brother Leo gives him the number of Jennie Malone, and somehow they hit it off. And just when things are moving along, the memory of his first wife comes between them.
Spoofing the entire 1940s detective genre, and his own performances as a bumbling private detective, Peter Falk plays Lou Pekinpaugh, a San Francisco private detective accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress, the partner's wife, Georgia Merkle.
A writer (made to resemble Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) narrates a collection of his stories, all of which are written in the style of Chekhov.
Paula knows that, in romance, actors all follow the same stage instruction—Exit. Without warning, her actor boyfriend splits for a movie role, and sublet their Manhattan apartment to Elliot, an actor.
Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.
Mel Edison has just lost his job after many years and now has to cope with being unemployed at middle age during an intense NYC heat wave.
Lewis and Clark, aka The Sunshine Boys, were famous comedians during the vaudeville era, but off-stage they couldn't stand each other and haven't spoken in over 20 years of retirement. Willy Clark's nephew is the producer of a TV variety show that wants to feature a reunion of this classic duo. It is up to him to try to get the Sunshine Boys back together again.
A middle aged restaurateur begins to feel the desire to roam and realizes that one day each week, his mother's apartment will be empty all afternoon. He makes several attempts at seduction, only to learn that it is much more complicated and difficult than he could have imagined.
Three days into his Miami honeymoon, Lenny meets tall, blonde Kelly. This confirms him in his opinion that he has made a serious mistake and he decides he wants Kelly instead.
A pair of 60's hippies fall in love with the girl next door, who is exactly the kind of square that they are fighting against.
Film version of the Neil Simon play has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Walter Matthau in a triple role. In the first, Karen Nash tries to get her inattentive husband Sam's attention to spruce up their failing marriage. In the second, brash film producer Jesse Kiplinger tries to get his former one-time flame Muriel to see him for what he stands for. In the third, Roy Hubley and his wife Norma try and try to get their uncertain-of-herself daughter out of the bathroom before her approaching wedding.
George & Gwen Kellerman make a trip to New York, where George is going to start a new job, it turns out to be a trip to hell.
In New York, Felix, a neurotic news writer who just broke up with his wife, is urged by his chaotic friend Oscar, a sports journalist, to move in with him, but their lifestyles are as different as night and day are, so Felix's ideas about housekeeping soon begin to irritate Oscar.
In this film based on a Neil Simon play, newlyweds Corie, a free spirit, and Paul Bratter, an uptight lawyer, share a sixth-floor apartment in Greenwich Village. Soon after their marriage, Corie tries to find a companion for mother, Ethel, who is now alone, and sets up Ethel with neighbor Victor. Inappropriate behavior on a double date causes conflict, and the young couple considers divorce.
Criminal mastermind 'The Fox' sets up a phony film production and masquerades as it's director as part of a plan to smuggle a stolen gold shipment into Italy.
The story of a young man's decision to leave the home of his parents for the bachelor pad of his older brother who leads a swinging '60s lifestyle.
A young girl becomes lost in a department store during the Christmas shopping rush. The frightened child is comforted by a department store Santa Claus who tells her a tale of storybook characters brought to life - of Tommy Tucker's love for the lovely Jane Piper and the cold-hearted villainy of evil Silas Barnaby. Through the girl's dreams, the viewer is transported to Toyland. Based on the classic Broadway operetta by Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough, this was its second live television special production, with some new cast members and some returning.
This live TV adaptation of the Broadway musical "Dearest Enemy" from 1925 is based on an American Revolutionary War incident in September 1776 when Mary Lindley Murray, under orders from General George Washington, detained General William Howe and his British troops by serving them cake, wine and conversation in her Kips Bay, Manhattan home long enough for some 4,000 American soldiers, fleeing their loss in the Battle of Brooklyn, to reassemble in Washington Heights and join reinforcements to make a successful counterattack.
Based on the classic Broadway operetta by Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough, this live television special became an annual Christmas tradition with rotating cast members.
