Jean Kerr

Comment

Dramatist Jean Kerr and her husband drama critic Walter Kerr have just returned from a vacation in Portugal, and Jean sits down in her Larchmont home for an interview with Douglas Cooper and George O'Brien.

Jean remarks on their experience in Portugal before describing the previews of her new play, Finishing Touches in London. The play draws on her family life, with its crises, in the midst of her adult children going off to college.

George notes that we had run into son Colin, a pre-med student while up in Cambridge. She notes that Chris is now in law school, John has authored a book on the counter-culture and Gilbert is at Harvard. Each has had "roles" in her plays, articles and books since they were small children. Finishing Touches transitions them out of the home.

We talk about the disparities, for young adults, in opportunities in New York vs. London. She reports, half in jest, that the whole array of actors they know in London are older, mellow, and in their prime. She lists the names of Shakespearean actors.

Cooper then asks Jean what is the primary impetus to get an audience into the theater, and she launches into a discussion of how few notices (newspapers) there had come to be in New York. She talks about going to the theater with Walter and the old saw that critics' wives are said to influence their reviews. She refutes that saying that Walter feels his obligation is only to the reader of his column, not to the ticket purchaser.

[Among Jean's numerous critical successes was Mary, Mary, which became, in its day, the longest-running straight play ever].

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The Douglas P. Cooper Distinguished Contemporaries Collection (1967-1974) contains rare interviews with influential writers, statesmen, artists, songwriters, journalists and others who have left their mark on our culture.

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