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Jean Kerr (born Bridget Jean Collins; July 10, 1922 – January 5, 2003) was an American author and playwright who authored the 1957 bestseller Please Don't Eat the Daisies and the plays King of Hearts in 1954 and Mary, Mary in 1961.
A nun at Marywood persuaded her to drop her first name, because "only Irish washerwomen are named Biddie".
The Kerrs also collaborated on the Tony Award-winning King of Hearts (1954), which ran for 279 performances; he directed the play that she co-wrote with Eleanor Brooke. King of Hearts was adapted for the screen in 1956 under the title That Certain Feeling. The film starred Bob Hope.
Jean Kerr wrote Jenny Kissed Me, which was produced in December 1948. She wrote the hit comedy Mary, Mary, which ran on Broadway from 1961 through 1964, for more than 1500 performances, and was brought to the screen under the same title in a 1963 film, starring Debbie Reynolds and Barry Nelson, which was a big hit.
She wrote sketches for John Murray Anderson's Almanac. Her book Please Don't Eat the Daisies was a big success, and it was made into a feature film in 1960. NBC also produced a 58-episode situation comedy starring Pat Crowley from 1965 to 1967, based on the book She then wrote The Snake Has All the Lines in 1960.
Kerr's play Finishing Touches ran from February to July 1973. Her other works include the plays Poor Richard (1964) and Lunch Hour (1980). She also wrote the books Penny Candy (1970) and How I Got to Be Perfect (1978). Her last play, Lunch Hour, was staged in 1980, and featured Sam Waterson and Gilda Radner. Kerr was skeptical of casting Radner in the play, but Mike Nichols persuaded her to watch Gilda Live, and Kerr was won over by her performance in the film, and she was offered the part.
Kerr was known to author her manuscripts and articles in longhand, and more than often, they were written in the family car, and her husband then typed them. American author Ernest K. Gann wrote in his book Twilight for the Gods, that "anyone who reads it ''Please, will consider it the most reasonable thing in the world that she prefers to do her writing seated in an automobile and parked two blocks away from her Larchmont, New York, home".
American cartoonist Dick Hodgins Jr. drew a caricature of Kerr in 1963, which was featured in several newspapers at the time.
The Kerrs bought a house in New Rochelle, New York, and later settled in Larchmont, New York in 1955. Their house in Larchmont was frequently characterized in her writings; it featured a two-story fireplace, turrets, a medieval courtyard, and a 32-bell carillon which played the duet from the opera Carmen at noon every day. The house was previously owned by Charles King, who test drove Henry Ford's first car.
She died of pneumonia in White Plains, New York in 2003.
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