The Prisoner of Second Avenue **** (1975, Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, Gene Saks) – Classic Movie Review 4655

Director Melvin Frank’s 1975 feature is a delightful, frenzied, often hilarious Neil Simon black comedy, with hints of darkness and bitterness balanced by the charismatic acting from Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft.

Lemmon stars as middle-aged New York City advertising agency boss Mel Edison, who suffers a nervous breakdown when he is fired from his job, and Bancroft plays his increasingly distraught long-suffering wife Edna. Not many laughs there, you would think, but Simon really seeks them out.

The film director Gene Saks plays Lemmon’s brother, while the young Sylvester Stallone has a mere walk-on role as a youth in Central Park in the year before Rocky, as does future Amadeus Oscar-winner F Murray Abraham as a taxi driver.

As Simon adapts it from his Broadway stage show, it is bit static, uncinematic and sometimes too obviously play based. However, it is thoughtful, honest, well written and extremely enjoyable for all that. Lemmon and Bancroft are a marvellous team. It is not my favourite Simon film but it has two of my all-time favourites starring.

The costumes by future director Joel Schumacher and the music is by Marvin Hamlisch.

Also in the cast are Elizabeth Wilson, Florence Stanley, M Emmet Walsh, Maxine Stuart, Ed Peck, Gene Blakely, Ivor Francis, Patricia Marshall, Dee Carroll, Stack Pierce and Ketty Lester as the unemployment clerk. [Lester had a number 5 pop hit with Love Letters in 1962.]

The stage play premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on 11 November 1971 and closed on 29 September 1973 after 798 performances and four previews. Peter Falk, Lee Grant and Vincent Gardenia starred. It was revived with Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl in London’s West End at the Vaudeville Theatre, opening on 30 June 2010 in previews. It was inspired by real-life events that happened to the uncle of Simon’s then wife.

Bancroft also stars in the film of Simon’s Broadway Bound (1992).

Saks directed the Simon movies Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Last of the Red Hot Lovers and Brighton Beach Memoirs, as well as Mame, with his wife Bea Arthur. He died on March 28, 2015, aged 93.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4655

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com