Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat: The Amazing Story of Mary Coyle Chase

Mary Chase, a housewife from Denver, Colorado, became a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for Harvey, a Broadway comedy about a gentle soul and his invisible six-foot-and-one-half-inch-tall rabbit friend. This entertaining and inspiring account traces how Chase achieved her dream of becoming a famous playwright while remaining in Denver, where she worked for the Rocky Mountain News, married an editor, and raised a family. Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat includes many vignettes and unforgettable stories about the theater industry, including the history of Franklin Roosevelt's Federal Theatre Project, the Broadway scene in the 1940s, and the importance of theater personalities such as Brock Pemberton, Antoinette Perry, and Frank Fay and Jimmy Stewart.

Format: Hardback
Length: 194 pages
Publication date: 08 December 2020
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Mary Chase, a housewife with three children from a working-class Irish community in Denver, Colorado, became a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for Harvey, a Broadway comedy about a gentle soul and his invisible six-foot-and-one-half-inch-tall rabbit friend. This entertaining and inspiring account traces how Chase achieved her dream of becoming a famous playwright while remaining in Denver, where she worked for the Rocky Mountain News, married an editor, and raised a family. Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat includes many vignettes and unforgettable stories about the theater industry. It brings to life the history of Franklin Roosevelt's Federal Theatre Project, provides readers with an insider's view of the Broadway scene in the 1940s, and highlights the importance of theater personalities, including Brock Pemberton (Harvey's producer), Antoinette Perry (Harvey's director and namesake for the Tony Awards), and Frank Fay and Jimmy Stewart (actors who played Elwood Dowd, the amiable, slightly tipsy gentleman lead character). The author of fourteen plays, three screenplays, and two award-winning children's books, Mary Chase created Harvey to counter sadness during the height of World War II. It would win the 1945 Pulitzer Prize (beating out Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie) and remain to this day one of the most beloved and underappreciated works of the twentieth century.

Weight: 504g
Dimension: 159 x 237 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538131688