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Mary Chase (playwright)

February 05, 2023

For other people with the same name, see Mary Chase (disambiguation).

Mary Chase (née Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle; February 25, 1906 – October 20, 1981)[1][2] was an American journalist, playwright and children's novelist, known primarily for writing the 1944 Broadway play Harvey, which was adapted into the 1950 film starring James Stewart.

Mary Coyle Chase
BornMary Agnes McDonough Coyle
(1906-02-25)February 25, 1906
Denver, Colorado, U.S.
DiedOctober 20, 1981(1981-10-20) (aged 75)
Denver, Colorado, U.S.
Notable worksHarvey
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama (1945)
SpouseRobert L. Chase
Children3

She wrote fourteen plays, two children's novels, and one screenplay, and worked seven years at the Rocky Mountain News as a journalist. Three of her plays were made into Hollywood films: Sorority House (1939), Harvey (1950), and Bernardine (1957).

Early years

Born Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle in Denver, Colorado, in 1906, Chase remained in Denver her entire life. Of Irish Catholic descent, she grew up in the working class Baker neighborhood of Denver, not far from the railroad tracks.[3]

She was greatly influenced by the Irish myths related to her by her mother, Mary Coyle, and her four uncles, Timothy, James, John, and Peter. Charlie Coyle, her older brother, had a strong impact on her sense of comedy, as she imitated his natural gifts at mimicry, one-liners, and comic routines.[4] He went on to become a circus clown.

In 1921, she graduated from West High School in Denver and spent two years studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Denver without getting a degree.[5]

Career

In 1924, Chase began her career as a journalist on the Denver Times and Rocky Mountain News, leaving the News (which the Denver Times was folded into in 1926) in 1931 to write plays, do freelance reporting work, and raise a family. At the News, she started writing on the society pages, but soon became a feature writer, reporting the news from a sob sister, emotional angle, becoming part of the news itself as a comic figure, "our Lil' Mary", or writing funny, flapper era pieces as part of a series of "Charlie & Mary" stories (Charlie Wunder drew the cartoons and Mary wrote the text).

In the 1920s, reporters typically worked in The Front Page tradition: putting in long hours, drinking hard, and stopping at nothing to beat the competition to a story. Running around Denver with photographer Harry Rhoads in a Model T Ford, she recalled, "In the course of a day, Harry and I might begin at the Police Court, go to a murder trial at the West Side Court, cover a party in the evening at Mrs. Crawford Hill's mansion, and rush to a shooting at 11pm."[6] She ended her journalistic career writing in the society pages where she had begun, perhaps as punishment for a practical joke that she played upon an unsuspecting editor.[7]

After leaving the News, in the 1930s Chase worked as a freelance correspondent for the United Press and the International News Service.[8] But her true love had always been the theater, so she began to write plays.

In 1936, her first play, Me Third, was produced at the Baker Federal Theater in Denver as a part of the Roosevelt-era Works Progress Administration (WPA). In the spring of 1937, the play opened on Broadway, renamed as Now You've Done It, but it failed to attract positive reviews and closed down after three weeks.[9]

In 1938, she wrote Chi House, which was made into a Hollywood film by RKO Radio Pictures called Sorority House (1939), starring Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables fame.[10]

In the early 1940s, she had a series of government, volunteer, and union jobs, serving as the Information Director for the National Youth Administration in Denver, doing volunteer work for the Colorado Foundation for the Advancement of Spanish Speaking Peoples, and working as the publicity director for the Denver branch of the Teamsters Union.[11]

Harvey

During this time, she was working on the play Harvey, which was very difficult for her to write and which went through numerous revisions, taking her two years to finish.[12] On November 1, 1944, it opened on Broadway and was a smash hit, running for four and a half years, 1,775 performances, closing on January 15, 1949.

Harvey became the 35th longest-running show (musicals and plays) in Broadway history and, if only plays are counted, the sixth longest-running Broadway play (after Life with Father, Tobacco Road, Abie's Irish Rose, Deathtrap, and Gemini). Frank Fay and James Stewart were the most famous actors to portray Elwood P. Dowd. Josephine Hull portrayed his increasingly concerned (and socially obsessed) sister Veta Simmons on Broadway originally, and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the film. Ruth McDevitt, Marion Lorne, Helen Hayes, and Swoosie Kurtz, among other actresses, also portrayed Veta either onstage or on television. Stewart was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the film version, but lost to Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac.

In 1945, Chase won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Harvey.[13] She is the only Coloradan to have won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and, in a field dominated by men, was the fourth woman to win the award, after Zona Gale (1921), Susan Glaspell (1931), and Zoe Akins (1935). From 1917 to 2013, only 14 women have won the Pulitzer in Drama.[14]

Immediately after Harvey, Chase tried to repeat her success on Broadway with The Next Half Hour, a play based on an autobiographical novel she had written called The Banshee. It failed after a three-week run.

In 1950, Harvey was made into a Universal Studios film, starring James Stewart, with Chase collaborating with Oscar Brodney in writing the screenplay.[15] In 1952 and 1953, she launched Bernardine and Mrs McThing on Broadway; both were moderately successful. Bernardine was made into a 1957 film starring Pat Boone and Janet Gaynor (in Gaynor's last film role). In 1958 and 1968, she wrote two children's stories, Loretta Mason Potts and The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House.[citation needed]

A 1961 production of her play, Midgie Purvis, starring Tallulah Bankhead, flopped. A 1970 Harvey revival, starring James Stewart and Helen Hayes, was successful and ran for 79 performances while a 1981 musical adaptation of Harvey, entitled Say Hello to Harvey, failed after a six-week run amid negative reviews in Toronto.[citation needed]

Personal life

In 1928, Mary Coyle married Robert L. (Bob) Chase, a fellow reporter at the Rocky Mountain News.[16] Bob Chase was a seasoned, "hard news" reporter, having worked at the Denver Express since 1922, covering the robbery of the US Mint and fighting against the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado state and local politics. The Express eventually merged with the Rocky Mountain News and Bob Chase went on to a 47-year newspaper career at the paper, becoming managing editor and then associate editor. He was a founding member in 1936 (and named vice-president) of the Denver chapter of the American Newspaper Guild, a national labor union representing editors and reporters.[17]

In 1932, their first son, Michael, was born, followed by Colin in 1935, and then Barry Jerome (Jerry) in 1937. Michael became the director of public television in New York, Colin was a professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto, and Jerry worked as a college academic counselor in New York City, and wrote the play Cinderella Wore Combat Boots.[citation needed]

Death

While working on the musical adaptation, Say Hello to Harvey, in 1981, Mary Coyle Chase suffered a heart attack suddenly at her home in Denver and died at the age of 75.

Recent events

In August 2009, Steven Spielberg announced that he was planning a remake of Harvey, with Tom Hanks or Will Smith playing Elwood Dowd.[18] By December he had abandoned the project, the main reason being the difficulty of finding a star to play the lead role. Tom Hanks was not interested in walking in the shoes of the beloved, iconic star James Stewart. Robert Downey Jr. was in the mix for several months, but he wanted changes to the script and Spielberg decided to pull the plug.

On June 14, 2012, the Roundabout Theatre Company opened its Broadway revival of Harvey to positive reviews at the Studio 54 Theatre.[19] The production starred Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), returning to Broadway after a successful run in the revival of The Normal Heart in the summer of 2011. Harvey was directed by Scott Ellis and also featured Charles Kimbrough (Emmy nominee, Murphy Brown) in the role of psychiatrist William Chumley and Jessica Hecht as Veta. Harvey was scheduled to run until August 5, 2012.[citation needed]

Honors

Bibliography

Plays
  • Me Third (1936)
  • Chi House (1938)
  • Slip of a Girl (1941)
  • Harvey (1944)
  • The Next Half Hour (1945)
  • Bernardine (1952)
  • Lolita (1954)
  • Mrs. McThing (1954) (also presented on television)
  • Midgie Purvis (1961)
  • The Prize Play (1961)
  • The Dog Sitters (1963)
  • Mickey (1969)
  • Cocktails With Mimi (1974)
  • The Terrible Tattoo Parlor (1981)
Children's stories
  • Loretta Mason Potts (1958)
  • The Wicked, Wicked Ladies In the Haunted House (1968)

Film adaptations

References

  1. ^ Gravestone at Olinger Crown Hill Mortuary, Denver, Colorado
  2. ^ Official Denver County Death Certificate.
    After her marriage, Chase misrepresented her year of birth, declaring it as 1907 when it was actually 1906, hence conflicting birth dates in various sources. Her New York Times obituary makes the same error, along with numerous reference works.
  3. ^ Wallis Reef, "She Didn't Write It For Money---She Says", The Saturday Evening Post, Sept 1, 1945, p. 109
  4. ^ Mary Coyle Chase, personal letter to Helen Cotton, Nov 9, 1971
  5. ^ Frances Melrose, "Mary Chase: Reporter to Playwright", Rocky Mountain News, Feb 27, 1977, p. 8
  6. ^ Frances Melrose, Rocky Mountain News, Sept 27, 1998, pg. 23D
  7. ^ Mary Coyle, Rocky Mountain News, October 25, 1925, Society Section, pg. 1 and Mary Coyle, Rocky Mountain News, September 30, 1928, Section Two, pg. 1
  8. ^ Kathleen Gough, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 228: 'Twentieth Century American Dramatists', pg. 40
  9. ^ John Mason Brown, New York Post, March 6, 1937; Eleanor Harris, Cosmopolitan, February 1954, p. 101
  10. ^ Frank Nugent, New York Times website, http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9406E0DA113CE73ABC4052DFB3668382629EDE
  11. ^ Frances Melrose, Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 1977, pg. 50
  12. ^ Eleanor Harris, Cosmopolitan, February 1954, p. 101
  13. ^ New York Times, May 8, 1945, p. 1
  14. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes".
  15. ^ IMDb website, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/fullcredits#writers
  16. ^ Rocky Mountain News, June 8, 1928, p. 7
  17. ^ Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, William Morrow & Co, 1976, p. 200-201
  18. ^ https://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR1118006812&categoryid=13 and http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006812.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=spielberg+harvey
  19. ^ 'Harvey' hops its way to Broadway this summer at http://www.ticketnews.com/news/harvey-hops-its-way-to-Broadway-this-summer061220949

External links

  • Mary Chase papers, 1928-1981.Houghton Library, Harvard University
  • Colorado Authors' League website
  • Mary Chase at Find a Grave
  • Mary Chase at the Internet Broadway Database  
  • Mary Chase at IMDb
  • Mary Chase at the Doolee Playwright's Database
  • Guide to the Mary Chase papers at the University of Oregon
  • . Denver's History. City and County of Denver. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-02-01. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
  • Guide to the Mary Coyle Chase Collection at the University of Denver. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
  • Colorado Women's Hall of Fame

February 05, 2023
mary, chase, playwright, other, people, with, same, name, mary, chase, disambiguation, mary, chase, née, mary, agnes, mcdonough, coyle, february, 1906, october, 1981, american, journalist, playwright, children, novelist, known, primarily, writing, 1944, broadw. For other people with the same name see Mary Chase disambiguation Mary Chase nee Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle February 25 1906 October 20 1981 1 2 was an American journalist playwright and children s novelist known primarily for writing the 1944 Broadway play Harvey which was adapted into the 1950 film starring James Stewart Mary Coyle ChaseBornMary Agnes McDonough Coyle 1906 02 25 February 25 1906Denver Colorado U S DiedOctober 20 1981 1981 10 20 aged 75 Denver Colorado U S Notable worksHarveyNotable awardsPulitzer Prize for Drama 1945 SpouseRobert L ChaseChildren3She wrote fourteen plays two children s novels and one screenplay and worked seven years at the Rocky Mountain News as a journalist Three of her plays were made into Hollywood films Sorority House 1939 Harvey 1950 and Bernardine 1957 Contents 1 Early years 2 Career 3 Harvey 4 Personal life 5 Death 6 Recent events 7 Honors 8 Bibliography 9 Film adaptations 10 References 11 External linksEarly years EditBorn Mary Agnes McDonough Coyle in Denver Colorado in 1906 Chase remained in Denver her entire life Of Irish Catholic descent she grew up in the working class Baker neighborhood of Denver not far from the railroad tracks 3 She was greatly influenced by the Irish myths related to her by her mother Mary Coyle and her four uncles Timothy James John and Peter Charlie Coyle her older brother had a strong impact on her sense of comedy as she imitated his natural gifts at mimicry one liners and comic routines 4 He went on to become a circus clown In 1921 she graduated from West High School in Denver and spent two years studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Denver without getting a degree 5 Career EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Mary Chase playwright news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message In 1924 Chase began her career as a journalist on the Denver Times and Rocky Mountain News leaving the News which the Denver Times was folded into in 1926 in 1931 to write plays do freelance reporting work and raise a family At the News she started writing on the society pages but soon became a feature writer reporting the news from a sob sister emotional angle becoming part of the news itself as a comic figure our Lil Mary or writing funny flapper era pieces as part of a series of Charlie amp Mary stories Charlie Wunder drew the cartoons and Mary wrote the text In the 1920s reporters typically worked in The Front Page tradition putting in long hours drinking hard and stopping at nothing to beat the competition to a story Running around Denver with photographer Harry Rhoads in a Model T Ford she recalled In the course of a day Harry and I might begin at the Police Court go to a murder trial at the West Side Court cover a party in the evening at Mrs Crawford Hill s mansion and rush to a shooting at 11pm 6 She ended her journalistic career writing in the society pages where she had begun perhaps as punishment for a practical joke that she played upon an unsuspecting editor 7 After leaving the News in the 1930s Chase worked as a freelance correspondent for the United Press and the International News Service 8 But her true love had always been the theater so she began to write plays In 1936 her first play Me Third was produced at the Baker Federal Theater in Denver as a part of the Roosevelt era Works Progress Administration WPA In the spring of 1937 the play opened on Broadway renamed as Now You ve Done It but it failed to attract positive reviews and closed down after three weeks 9 In 1938 she wrote Chi House which was made into a Hollywood film by RKO Radio Pictures called Sorority House 1939 starring Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables fame 10 In the early 1940s she had a series of government volunteer and union jobs serving as the Information Director for the National Youth Administration in Denver doing volunteer work for the Colorado Foundation for the Advancement of Spanish Speaking Peoples and working as the publicity director for the Denver branch of the Teamsters Union 11 Harvey EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Mary Chase playwright news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message During this time she was working on the play Harvey which was very difficult for her to write and which went through numerous revisions taking her two years to finish 12 On November 1 1944 it opened on Broadway and was a smash hit running for four and a half years 1 775 performances closing on January 15 1949 Harvey became the 35th longest running show musicals and plays in Broadway history and if only plays are counted the sixth longest running Broadway play after Life with Father Tobacco Road Abie s Irish Rose Deathtrap and Gemini Frank Fay and James Stewart were the most famous actors to portray Elwood P Dowd Josephine Hull portrayed his increasingly concerned and socially obsessed sister Veta Simmons on Broadway originally and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the film Ruth McDevitt Marion Lorne Helen Hayes and Swoosie Kurtz among other actresses also portrayed Veta either onstage or on television Stewart was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the film version but lost to Jose Ferrer for Cyrano de Bergerac In 1945 Chase won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Harvey 13 She is the only Coloradan to have won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and in a field dominated by men was the fourth woman to win the award after Zona Gale 1921 Susan Glaspell 1931 and Zoe Akins 1935 From 1917 to 2013 only 14 women have won the Pulitzer in Drama 14 Immediately after Harvey Chase tried to repeat her success on Broadway with The Next Half Hour a play based on an autobiographical novel she had written called The Banshee It failed after a three week run In 1950 Harvey was made into a Universal Studios film starring James Stewart with Chase collaborating with Oscar Brodney in writing the screenplay 15 In 1952 and 1953 she launched Bernardine and Mrs McThing on Broadway both were moderately successful Bernardine was made into a 1957 film starring Pat Boone and Janet Gaynor in Gaynor s last film role In 1958 and 1968 she wrote two children s stories Loretta Mason Potts and The Wicked Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House citation needed A 1961 production of her play Midgie Purvis starring Tallulah Bankhead flopped A 1970 Harvey revival starring James Stewart and Helen Hayes was successful and ran for 79 performances while a 1981 musical adaptation of Harvey entitled Say Hello to Harvey failed after a six week run amid negative reviews in Toronto citation needed Personal life EditIn 1928 Mary Coyle married Robert L Bob Chase a fellow reporter at the Rocky Mountain News 16 Bob Chase was a seasoned hard news reporter having worked at the Denver Express since 1922 covering the robbery of the US Mint and fighting against the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado state and local politics The Express eventually merged with the Rocky Mountain News and Bob Chase went on to a 47 year newspaper career at the paper becoming managing editor and then associate editor He was a founding member in 1936 and named vice president of the Denver chapter of the American Newspaper Guild a national labor union representing editors and reporters 17 In 1932 their first son Michael was born followed by Colin in 1935 and then Barry Jerome Jerry in 1937 Michael became the director of public television in New York Colin was a professor of English Literature at the University of Toronto and Jerry worked as a college academic counselor in New York City and wrote the play Cinderella Wore Combat Boots citation needed Death EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Mary Chase playwright news newspapers books scholar JSTOR August 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message While working on the musical adaptation Say Hello to Harvey in 1981 Mary Coyle Chase suffered a heart attack suddenly at her home in Denver and died at the age of 75 Recent events EditIn August 2009 Steven Spielberg announced that he was planning a remake of Harvey with Tom Hanks or Will Smith playing Elwood Dowd 18 By December he had abandoned the project the main reason being the difficulty of finding a star to play the lead role Tom Hanks was not interested in walking in the shoes of the beloved iconic star James Stewart Robert Downey Jr was in the mix for several months but he wanted changes to the script and Spielberg decided to pull the plug On June 14 2012 the Roundabout Theatre Company opened its Broadway revival of Harvey to positive reviews at the Studio 54 Theatre 19 The production starred Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons The Big Bang Theory returning to Broadway after a successful run in the revival of The Normal Heart in the summer of 2011 Harvey was directed by Scott Ellis and also featured Charles Kimbrough Emmy nominee Murphy Brown in the role of psychiatrist William Chumley and Jessica Hecht as Veta Harvey was scheduled to run until August 5 2012 citation needed Honors Edit1944 William McLeod Raine Award Colorado Authors League 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Drama 1947 Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Denver 1960 Receives the Monte Meacham Award from the Children s Theater Conference of the AETA American Educational Theater Association 1985 Inducted into the Colorado Women s Hall of Fame along with Golda Meir the Unsinkable Molly Brown and Mamie Eisenhower 1999 Inducted into the Colorado Performing Arts Hall of Fame alongside Douglas Fairbanks Sr and Glenn Miller Bibliography EditPlaysMe Third 1936 Chi House 1938 Slip of a Girl 1941 Harvey 1944 The Next Half Hour 1945 Bernardine 1952 Lolita 1954 Mrs McThing 1954 also presented on television Midgie Purvis 1961 The Prize Play 1961 The Dog Sitters 1963 Mickey 1969 Cocktails With Mimi 1974 The Terrible Tattoo Parlor 1981 Children s storiesLoretta Mason Potts 1958 The Wicked Wicked Ladies In the Haunted House 1968 Film adaptations EditSorority House 1939 Harvey 1950 Bernardine 1957 References Edit Gravestone at Olinger Crown Hill Mortuary Denver Colorado Official Denver County Death Certificate After her marriage Chase misrepresented her year of birth declaring it as 1907 when it was actually 1906 hence conflicting birth dates in various sources Her New York Times obituary makes the same error along with numerous reference works Wallis Reef She Didn t Write It For Money She Says The Saturday Evening Post Sept 1 1945 p 109 Mary Coyle Chase personal letter to Helen Cotton Nov 9 1971 Frances Melrose Mary Chase Reporter to Playwright Rocky Mountain News Feb 27 1977 p 8 Frances Melrose Rocky Mountain News Sept 27 1998 pg 23D Mary Coyle Rocky Mountain News October 25 1925 Society Section pg 1 and Mary Coyle Rocky Mountain News September 30 1928 Section Two pg 1 Kathleen Gough Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 228 Twentieth Century American Dramatists pg 40 John Mason Brown New York Post March 6 1937 Eleanor Harris Cosmopolitan February 1954 p 101 Frank Nugent New York Times website http movies nytimes com movie review res 9406E0DA113CE73ABC4052DFB3668382629EDE Frances Melrose Rocky Mountain News February 27 1977 pg 50 Eleanor Harris Cosmopolitan February 1954 p 101 New York Times May 8 1945 p 1 The Pulitzer Prizes IMDb website https www imdb com title tt0042546 fullcredits writers Rocky Mountain News June 8 1928 p 7 Bill Hosokawa Thunder in the Rockies William Morrow amp Co 1976 p 200 201 https www variety com index asp layout print story amp articleid VR1118006812 amp categoryid 13 and http www variety com article VR1118006812 html categoryid 13 amp cs 1 amp query spielberg harvey Harvey hops its way to Broadway this summer at http www ticketnews com news harvey hops its way to Broadway this summer061220949External links Edit Biography portal Children s literature portalMary Chase papers 1928 1981 Houghton Library Harvard University Colorado Authors League website Mary Chase at Find a Grave Mary Chase at the Internet Broadway Database Mary Chase at IMDb Mary Chase at the Doolee Playwright s Database Guide to the Mary Chase papers at the University of Oregon Mary McDonough Coyle Chase Denver s History City and County of Denver 2009 Archived from the original on 2009 02 01 Retrieved 2009 02 12 Guide to the Mary Coyle Chase Collection at the University of Denver Retrieved 2014 09 26 Colorado Women s Hall of Fame Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mary Chase playwright amp oldid 1112401245, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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