The Prisoner Of Second Avenue

If Death of a Salesman had been written as a comedy, it would probably look something like The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975). Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft play Mel and Edna Edison, a long married New York couple who are getting fed up with the constant hassles of big city life. When Mel loses his job unexpectedly, he is thrust into a downward spiral that leaves him teetering on the brink of sanity and his marriage hanging by a thread. The Prisoner of Second Avenue was based on the 1971 Tony award-winning Neil Simon play of the same name that originally starred Peter Falk and Lee Grant. Simon had been inspired to write the play based on an episode from the life of his wife's uncle. The uncle had been a successful businessman with a comfortable life when he suddenly decided to give it all up at the age of 50 and follow his dream of owning a small town newspaper. Knowing practically nothing about the newspaper business, the venture soon failed, leaving the uncle broke and on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Extracting the comedy from a terrible situation as only he could, Neil Simon turned the episode into a Broadway hit. Despite the play's success, Simon was leery of having it made into a movie. Even though he wrote the screenplay himself, Simon worried that the material was too dark and might not transition well onto the big screen. When the film version was in pre-production with Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft in the leads, however, he agreed to fly to California and be present for rehearsals so that he could do any necessary rewrites. Simon grew more optimistic about the film version of The Prisoner of Second Avenue when he was able to work directly with director Melvin Frank (A Touch of Class [1973]) and the cast. "My spirits took a turn for the better when I saw Jack Lemmon again, this being our third picture together," says Simon in his 1999 memoir The Play Goes On, "and I was thrilled at the prospect of working for the first time with the wonderful Anne Bancroft. Once we gathered around the table and listened to Jack and Annie read the script, I felt an enormous sense of relief and gratitude. I had two major stars who would carry the day even though I wasn't sure I could carry my weight." During rehearsals, Simon agreed to make some small changes in the script based on feedback from Melvin Frank. After becoming ill during his stay in Los Angeles, however, Simon was forced to cut his visit short and return home. Simon trusted Frank with the final product, and instructed him to "make any changes in the script as he saw fit" without him. Director Frank was excited about making The Prisoner of Second Avenue and especially working with Jack Lemmon. "I'd been trying to do a film with Lemmon for years, but for one reason or another we never got together," said Frank (in the biography Lemmon by Don Widener). "I think Jack is one of the two great actors I've seen develop in my years in the business; the other is Brando. And I have always admired Bancroft; she's a great actress." Anne Bancroft, according to Widener, found Jack Lemmon to be a warm and generous actor to work with, calling him "nice to a point where he's crazy...We had a scene in Prisoner where he had to carry a shovel in - a very close two-shot favoring me," she explained. "I played the scene with tears in my eyes because Jack had accidentally hit me in the shin with that shovel. The director saw something was wrong so he stopped everything. I had a big bump on my leg, but it was Friday and over the weekend I fixed it up. When we came back on Monday the first scene was a retake of the shovel thing. Well, Jack brought the shovel in and I anticipated getting hit again. He's so full of energy, you're sure he's not noticing; but he never touched me. The take was fine, but Jack limped away. To avoid hurting me, he had cut himself. He was bleeding and we had to bandage his leg; his wound was much worse than mine. He is so kind he hurt himself rather than injure someone else. That's a little crazy! It's the nicest crazy I know, and I know a lot of crazy people." Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft both give remarkable performances in The Prisoner of Second Avenue and their chemistry as a long married couple is strong and believable. The supporting cast including Gene Saks as Lemmon's one-upping brother Harry and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley as Lemmon's concerned sisters all do excellent work. Watch for M. Emmet Walsh as the Edisons' doorman, F. Murray Abraham as a cab driver, and Sylvester Stallone as a man Lemmon encounters in the park in one of the film's funniest sequences. Producer: Melvin Frank Director: Melvin Frank Screenplay: Neil Simon (screenplay and play) Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop Art Direction: Preston Ames Music: Marvin Hamlisch Film Editing: Bob Wyman Cast: Jack Lemmon (Mel Edison), Anne Bancroft (Edna Edison), Gene Saks (Harry Edison), Elizabeth Wilson (Pauline), Florence Stanley (Pearl), Maxine Stuart (Belle), Ed Peck (man upstairs), Gene Blakely (Charlie), Ivor Francis (psychiatrist), Stack Pierce (detective). C-97m. Letterboxed. by Andrea Passafiume