Bridget Jean Collins, Jean Kerr
10 July 1922 – 5 January 2003
Birthplace: Scranton, Pennsylvania
American author & playwright
“A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, any more than a good mortician wants to finish the job and then have the patient sit up on the table.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
Mary, Mary (1960) Script, Act I; New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1965 revised ed., p. 33
Extended excerpt [Play dialogue – character ‘Oscar’ to ‘Bob’ & ‘Mary’]:
“OSCAR. (Crosses U.R.C., eyeing them both.) Please don’t be embarrassed on my account. I’m delighted. I hate a friendly divorce. A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, any more than a good mortician wants to finish the job and then have the patient sit up on the table.” (p. 33)”
Source note: Jean Kerr’s Mary, Mary opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York City on March 8, 1961. In this first production, the character ‘Oscar Nelson’ was played by actor John Cromwell.
Source: Library – Mary, Mary (1960|1965 Dramatists Play Service ed.) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 1954782
“Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
Mary, Mary (1960) Script, Act I; New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1965 revised ed., p. 19
Extended excerpt [Play dialogue – character ‘Mary’ to ‘Oscar’]:
“MARY. (Still not located in space.) Well, being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left. While I was looking I noticed that I was the only twenty-eight-year-old girl wearing a polo coat and no lipstick. (Puts her gloves on table c.)”
Source: Library – Mary, Mary (1960|1965 Dramatists Play Service ed.) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 1954782Library – Mary, Mary (1960|1965 Dramatists Play Service ed.) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 1954782
“I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
“Go Josephine in Your Flying Machine” (1960) McCall’s magazine, reprint in The Snake Has All the Lines, New York, NY: Crest Books, March 1962 edition, p. 28; online via Open Library [free subscription service], openlibrary.org
Extended excerpt [Essay – Opening lines]:
“I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. When a friend of mine decides to fly to Milwaukee, I drive her out to La Guardia with marvelous calm and equanimity. I am positively light-hearted in the knowledge that she will receive loving, tender care and arrive with every curl intact.” (p.28)
Source link: The Snake Has All the Lines (1960|Mar. 1962 Crest Books ed.) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/snakehasalllines00kerr#page/28/mode/2up/search/diets
“I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas?”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, I don’t Want to Hear One Word Out of You” (1960) Ladies’ Home Journal, reprint in The Snake Has All the Lines, New York, NY: Crest Books, March 1962 edition, p. 122; online via Open Library [free subscription service], openlibrary.org
Extended excerpt [Essay – Opening lines]:
“I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas? Personally, I find that it’s work, work, work just trying to keep this top half inch in shape.” (p. 122)
Source link: Library – The Snake Has All the Lines (1960|Mar. 1962 Crest Books ed.) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/snakehasalllines00kerr#page/122/mode/2up/search/diets
“Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
Finishing Touches (1972) Script, Act I, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1974, p. 24; online via Open Library [free subscription service], openlibrary.org
Extended excerpt [Play dialogue – ‘Jeff’ to ‘Katy’ & ‘Kevin.’ In the excerpt below, Kerr is referring to an idea from poet W.H. Auden, but not quoting him directly.]:
“JEFF: Kevin, say good-bye to your mother and, if you can manage it, me. Remember what Auden says. Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.” (p. 24)
Source note: Jean Kerr’s play Finishing Touches first opened at the Plymouth Theatre in New York City on February 8, 1973. In this initial production, the character ‘Jeff Cooper’ was played by actor Robert Lansing.
[Source: Jean Kerr, Finishing Touches (1972) Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2002 ed., p. 3]
Source link: Finishing Touches (1972| 1974 Doubleday & Co.) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/finishingtouches00kerr#page/24/search/only+animal+that+learns
“Now the thing about having a baby – and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this – is that thereafter you have it.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957) New York: Crest Books, 2nd Crest printing, February 1959, introduction, p. 15; online via Open Library [free subscription service] openlibrary.org
Extended excerpt [Essay – italics original to cited text]:
“Now the thing about having a baby – and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this – is that thereafter you have it, and it’s years before you can distract it from any elemental need by saying, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, go look at television.” (p. 15)
Source link: Library – Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/pleasedonteatdai00kerr#page/14/mode/2up/search/thereafter
“The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.”
~Jean Kerr, American author & playwright
“How to Get the Best in Your Children” (1957) Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, New York, NY: Crest Books, 2nd Crest printing, February 1959, p. 116; online via Open Library[free subscription service] openlibrary.org
Extended excerpt [Essay]:
“Another distressing aspect of disciplining young children is that somehow you are always left with the flat end of the dialogue – a straight man forever. It’s not just that you feel idiotic. The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.” (p. 116)
Source link: Library – Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/pleasedonteatdai00kerr#page/116/mode/2up/search/graspe
Learn more about Jean Kerr | Here are a few good places to start –
