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Jean Kerr
1922–2003
Born Scranton, Pennsylvania
Upon receiving her master's degree from Catholic University in 1945, the playwright Jean Kerr moved from Washington, D.C., to New York City. By the 1950s, her humorous takes on American middle-class angst were starting to earn recognition. Her script for King of Hearts (1954), co-written with Eleanor Brooke, received rave reviews, and she had further success with Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957). Mary, Mary (1961), a comedic play about sex, marriage, infidelity, weight loss, and divorce, became one of the longest-running plays on Broadway, and it was subsequently made into a major motion picture. Kerr lived to be eighty and is often remembered for her ability to find "the comic in the commonplace anxieties of suburbia and married life."
Time magazine featured Kerr on its cover when she was promoting Mary, Mary. This painting, by RenéBouché, was based on lengthy portrait sittings in the Kerr household.
René Robert Bouché (1905–1963)
Oil on canvas, 1961Time cover, April 14, 1961
Gift of Time magazine |