”They finished shooting on `Brighton Beach Memoirs` last week, and two days ago I finished writing the third play in the trilogy. I should see the rough `Brighton Beach` print in 10 days. The finished movie is due out next October. They`ve got a timetable for these things that I don`t understand.”
But after 22 stage plays and 17 movie scripts, Neil Simon does understand things dramatic.
He was chatting at the Sarah Siddons Society dinner-dance last week at the Ritz.
The third play in the trilogy, ”Broadway Bound,” (”Biloxi Blues” was No. 2) ”took five months. My first play, `Come Blow Your Horn,` took 20 rewrites over three years–weekends and nights while I was working in television to support my family. I swore then that I`d never do it again. But now I know earlier when something is going wrong–basic things like getting people on and off stage.”
The Siddons folks, with 31 other galas to their credit, got their troupers on and off without a hitch, too: six singer/hoofers from WAA/Mu;
Simon; society president Camille Hatzenbuehler; three student scholarship recipients; and the woman of the hour, Siddons award-winner Rita Moreno.
In off-the-cuff remarks and a sleeveless beaded gown, Moreno thanked the audience and then sang for her supper, by turns slinky, sassy, sultry and brassy during three show tunes and a medley with Stanley Paul`s dance band as a back-up.
Applause, applause.
Ball gowns and black ties then took the floor and waltzed, while some ladies in minks grabbed centerpieces on their way out.
