ABSTRACT

Jean Kerr has achieved success in two areas, publishing and the theater. Her collection of short essays, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, remained on the non-fiction best-seller list for two years, selling over two million copies in hardcover and paper, while her comedy Mary, Mary delighted Broadway audiences for 1,572 performances. Kerr was born Bridget Jean Collins on July 10, 1923, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her father was a building contractor; her mother was a second cousin of Eugene O'Neill. She performed in high school and at Mary-wood College, from which she received her BA in 1943. Two years previously, while working as stage manager for the college production of Romeo and Juliet, she met Walter Kerr, a professor of drama at Catholic University. Kerr's playwriting career dates back to her university days. With her husband she adapted Franz Werfel's popular novel The Song of Bernadette, which had a brief run on Broadway in 1946.