RIP Neil Simon

[Jim Eshelman]

We don't have a birth time, but the single most successful playwright since Shakespeare, Neil Simon, was born July 4, 1927, in the Bronx.

And what could represent the author of The Odd Couple better than a Gemini Sun backed by a dramatic, flourishing Leo Moon. (That was his most distinctive "couple" or "two" title, but the theme of twosomes worked its way through nearly everything in his body of work, from Basrefoot in the Park to The Goodbye Girl and California Suite,. And then, of course, we find The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Chapter Two, the epitome title The Odd Couple II, and other dualisms, with other Gemini themes like The Sunshine Boys, The Good Doctor, and Rumors.)

The aspect hallmark of his chart is his set of Mercury aspects: A precise Grand trine at 8° Cancer, 8° Scorpio, and 9° Pisces of his Mercury, Saturn, and exact Jupiter-Uranus, respectively.

Simon died this weekend, on August 26, in Manhattan, of complications of pneumonia.