A ‘Sweet’ Moment for Simon : Stage: The veteran playwright says his Pulitzer for ‘Lost in Yonkers’ ‘comes for one of my very special plays.’

Official news that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for his play, “Lost in Yonkers,” found Neil Simon vacationing in Hawaii.

“Thirty years and 27 plays,” Simon said on the phone, assessing the time it took for him to win his first Pulitzer.

“I guess that no matter when it comes it would always feel sweet. You would like to feel that it came for a play that feels very special. For myself, I think it comes for one of my very special plays.”

“Lost in Yonkers,” which opened on Broadway Feb. 21, is the story of an old grandmother who survived the Holocaust to become the unflinching owner of a Yonkers candy store.

“It is one of my darkest plays,” he said. “The darkness comes out of the best humor I’ve ever had in a play. It’s all the stronger because of the humor.

“I never know ahead of time where a play is going,” he said. “You sort of have a glimpse in your mind of some major confrontation, but you’re never sure of it. In this play, from the start, I was on the right track and I didn’t seem able to get off. And then there are the rewrites. We were out of town for seven weeks and every day of those seven weeks I cut or added or did something to it.”

Meanhwhile, Simon seemed unfazed by a premature press release issued Monday in Los Angeles by press agent Susan Patricola, citing Simon as the Pulitzer winner before any announcement had been made.

“I had heard it around,” he said. “Someone had spoken to my wife (Diane). I think she spoke with Susan, who is a friend. Diane didn’t know any more than I knew.”