Jean Kerr Essay, Research Paper

Jean Kerr was a woman with a great style of writing; she was like Thorton Wilder

in the sense that she likes to see the big picture in life. She uses logic in

her writings. Her family somewhat affected her type of writing. She tended to

focus on the humorous aspect of her life and that could relate to almost

everyone who read her works. Kerr had a wonderful sense of humor and that helped

her write on the level of her readers. Jean Kerr was born July 10, 1923 in

Scranton, Pennsylvania to Kitty and Thomas Collins. Her father was a building

contractor, her mother was a housewife, and she had a younger sister. She is a

very pretty woman with a nice Irish complexion and she is very tall. She went to

Marywood Seminary and the college, both in Scranton. While working in the

school’s play she met her future husband, Walter Kerr. At that time he was a

drama critic, and he persuaded her to move to Washington DC and the Catholic

University to study. Then after dating for two years, Walter and Jean were

married on August 16, 1943. The newly married couple did many things together,

including writing plays. Their first play was The Song of Bernadette, an

adaptation of a novel by Franz Werfel. This play made it all the way to Broadway

but closed after only three performances. The reviews for this were mixed, to

some it was “far superior to the movie…” (Candee 222) and to others it was

“conventionally written with too little compulsion and excitement” (Candee

222). With the influence of her husband she tended to write better plays, but

her greatest influence is probably her children. She is said to have written

most of her works in her car just a few blocks away from the house and the

children. She has one daughter and five sons, enough to make a whole library of

funny tales about everyday happenings of ordinary people can all relate to. Kerr

wrote about the problems that are faced in everyday life and focused on the

humorous side of them. She also has said, “the most important thing is that I

am a Catholic. It’s a superstructure within which you can work, like the

sonnet. I need that.” (Wakeman 780). Her religion was very important to her;

she is very involved in the Catholic religion. Kerr’s most famous work was

Touch and Go, a comedy in which Kerr and her husband make fun of intelligent

topics with fast dexterity. This play ran 176 performances on Broadway. Jenny

Kissed Me, Finishing Touches, Mary, Mary, and King of Hearts also made it to

Broadway, the latter play running for nine months. Mary, Mary was another of her

plays to get mixed reviews. Henry Howes said it was “two almost constantly

funny hours of her own brand of comic verisimilitude.”(Wakeman 779) Gerald

Weales thought, “every line is a laugh line” (Wakeman 779). Yet other were

still unimpressed with it and said it was “thin as glass and just as

transparent” (Wakeman 779). The play Finishing Touches got some good reviews;

it was labeled professional…

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