Sam Simon, the often-overlooked but instrumental co-creator of “The Simpsons,” which popularized the hapless patriarch Homer (“D’oh!”) and his puckish son, Bart (“Eat my shorts!”), and became a phenomenon in the new genre of irreverent animated sitcoms, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59.
One of his business managers announced the death. Simon had terminal colon cancer diagnosed in November 2012.
Twice divorced and with no children, he vowed to spend his remaining months giving away his fortune to animal rights and conservation causes. They had become his main interests after his acrimonious departure from “The Simpsons” in 1993.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Simon helped fund the transfer of captive bears from Tennessee and Georgia to a wild animal sanctuary in Keenesburg, as recently as December.
“The Simpsons” is today the longest-running scripted prime-time series, having surpassed “Gunsmoke” and “Law and Order.” Simon’s lawyers had negotiated a deal that netted their client $20 million to $30 million annually from the show’s licensing fees from T-shirts, posters, lunch boxes and other paraphernalia. Simon, who had worked on the network comedies “Taxi” and “Cheers” in his 20s and was widely regarded as a prodigy of television sitcom writing and producing, essentially retired from show business at 38.
Because he had been gone from “The Simpsons” for so long, Simon was publicly overshadowed by the two other people who conceptualized the characters for a scripted half-hour show: veteran TV and film producer James L. Brooks and “Life in Hell” cartoonist Matt Groening.
Simon was regarded as a master of sitcom script structure and punchline set-ups and helped shepherd “The Simpsons” through its formative years after it launched on Fox in 1989.
A prototype of the characters appeared in small doses on the Fox sketch comedy program “The Tracey Ullman Show” in the late 1980s.
“You can’t overstate his contribution to ‘The Simpsons,'” talk-show host and former “Simpsons” writer and producer Conan O’Brien told The Associated Press in 2013. “No one’s smarter than he is.”
Simon’s breakthrough came in 1981 when he submitted an unsolicited script to “Taxi,” a sitcom starring Danny DeVito and Judd Hirsch about a group of cab company misfits. Simon was hired as a full-time writer and then script overseer until the series (then on NBC) ended in 1983 amid dwindling ratings.
From there, he wrote for the wildly popular NBC sitcom “Cheers” for its first three seasons. He also wrote the script to the 1991 movie “The Super.”
His marriages to actress Jennifer Tilly and Playboy Playmate Jami Ferrell ended in divorce. Survivors include a sister.
“Thanks to Bart Simpson,” he said, “I have a pretty good life.”
