A short life of the author
Jean Kerr (10 July 1922 – 5 January 2003) was an American humorist and playwright whose bestselling essay collection Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957) and whose Broadway comedy Mary, Mary (1961) made her one of the most popular American humorous writers of the postwar era. She was the domestic-comedy counterpart to Erma Bombeck and Shirley Jackson — a witty, self-deprecating chronicler of suburban motherhood who could make the chaos of raising four boys, living in a ramshackle house, and being married to the most powerful drama critic in New York (New York Times critic Walter Kerr) sound both hilarious and heroic.
Life
She was born Jean Collins in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and educated at Marywood College and the Catholic University of America, where she studied drama and met Walter Kerr, then a professor. They married in 1943 and had six children (five sons and a daughter, including the writer Colin Kerr). Walter Kerr became drama critic of the New York Herald Tribune and later the New York Times, making him one of the most influential figures in American theatre. Jean Kerr’s position as the wife of the chief critic created obvious complications for her own playwriting career — a situation she mined for comic material.
The family lived in Larchmont, New York, in a large, chronically disordered house that became the setting for her essays. The children, the house, the commute to Manhattan, and the absurdities of upper-middle-class suburban life provided her material.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957)
Kerr’s first essay collection was a massive bestseller — it spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list, was adapted into a 1960 Doris Day film, and spawned a television series (1965–1967). The essays describe the daily catastrophes of raising four boys: the school plays, the birthday parties, the household emergencies, the futile attempts to maintain order and dignity in a house full of small destructive males.
The humor is sharp, self-deprecating, and precisely observed. Kerr is funnier than Bombeck (who came later) because she is a better prose stylist and because her wit has an edge — she is not merely recounting domestic chaos but commenting on the absurdity of a culture that expects women to maintain spotless homes, raise perfect children, write books, and look beautiful while doing it. The title essay — about a family attempting to move into a new house while the children systematically destroy it — is a classic of comic escalation.
The Snake Has All the Lines (1960)
Her second essay collection continued the domestic-comedy formula with equal success. The title refers to the theatrical observation that the villain always gets the best dialogue — an apt metaphor for Kerr’s children, who consistently upstage their mother. The essays are sharper and more confident than Daisies, and several — particularly her observations about children’s television, school conferences, and the terrors of hosting dinner parties — remain genuinely funny.
Mary, Mary (1961)
Kerr’s most successful play is a romantic comedy about a divorced couple (Mary and Bob McKellaway) who are forced to spend an evening together in Bob’s New York apartment and discover that they are still in love. The play ran for 1,572 performances on Broadway — one of the longest runs in Broadway history at that time — and toured internationally. It is a well-crafted piece of comic theatre: the dialogue is witty, the situation is engaging, and the resolution is satisfying.
Poor Richard (1964) and Finishing Touches (1973) were her other Broadway plays. Neither achieved the success of Mary, Mary, but both demonstrated her skill with comic dialogue.
Critical Standing
Kerr belongs to a tradition of American women humorists — Cornelia Otis Skinner, Betty MacDonald, Erma Bombeck, Nora Ephron — whose domestic comedy was enormously popular and critically undervalued. Her work has not aged perfectly: the gender assumptions of 1950s suburban life limit its contemporary resonance. But her best essays remain funny, and Mary, Mary is a durable piece of theatrical craftsmanship.
Collecting Kerr
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1957, Doubleday) in first edition brings $15–$50. The Snake Has All the Lines (1960) brings $10–$30. Signed copies are uncommon.