Harvey the Articles in This Study Guide Are Not Meant to Mirror Or Interpret Any Productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival

Home , Harvey (play), Mary Chase (playwright)

Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

Harvey The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: Sam Stuart in Harvey, 2002. Contents

InformationHarvey on the Play Synopsis 4 Characters 5 About the Playwright 5

Scholarly Articles on the Play Almost Magical Relationship 6

Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: Harvey It is a spring afternoon at the Dowd family home, and a tea for the high-society ladies of the Wednesday Forum is in full swing. The hostess, Veta Louise Simmons, is hoping that the event will allow her daughter, Myrtle Mae, now in her twenties and still unmarried, to mingle with the moth- ers and grandmothers of some of the town’s remaining eligible bachelors. However, to Veta’s horror, her brother, Elwood P. Dowd, arrives home unexpectedly and in the company of his closest friend, Harvey, a six foot one-and-a-half inch tall white rabbit—a friend nobody else can see. Veta and Myrtle Mae are mortified as Elwood who, ever pleasant and polite, begins introducing his companion to the ladies of the Wednesday Forum. The embarrassing family secret is now exposed, and all that Veta and Myrtle Mae can do is watch helplessly as their guests flee the house. In spite of the fact that they are living in Elwood’s house and being supported by his money, Veta and Myrtle Mae vow that this is the last time they will be humiliated by his eccentric behav- ior. They determine that the only solution is to commit Elwood to Chumley’s Rest, a sanitarium. Later that afternoon, they arrive by cab with Elwood at the sanitarium. Elwood is hustled away by Wilson, the sanitarium orderly. In the office, Veta meets with Dr. Sanderson and attempts to explain the situation of her brother and his invisible rabbit companion. Veta’s agitated state of mind, however, leads Dr. Sanderson to the conclusion that a terrible mistake has been made and that it is she, not her brother, who is the one in need of treatment—so he releases Elwood and sends Veta off to the hydro-therapy tub. In an ensuing conversation between Dr. Sanderson and his superior, Dr. Chumley, it gradu- ally becomes clear that yet another mistake has been made. It is indeed Elwood, not Veta, who was to have been committed. Veta, having suffered many indignities, is thus released, and the hunt for Elwood is on. In the ensuing confusion, the doctors, Veta, and Elwood all try to figure out who is really crazy—no one, everyone, Elwood, Veta, or the doctors themselves? What, afterall, as the cab driver says, is “a perfectly normal human being”? Of course, it all gets sorted out in the end, but there are many surprises (as well as comic doses of wisdom) along the way, as everyone questions just what exactly is real.

Characters: Harvey

4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Myrtle Mae Simmons: The daughter of Veta Simmons, Myrtle Mae is in her early twenties and still unmarried, a source of concern to her mother. Veta Simmons: Myrtle Mae’s mother and Elwood’s sister, Veta considered herself a member of the “better society” of their small town and is a member of the Wednesday Forum, a social club for the ladies of the town. She is, however, slightly embarrassed by her brother. Elwood P. Dowd: Veta’s brother, Elwood is forty-seven years old and owns the family home he lives in with Myrtle and Veta. He is pleasant, loveable, and a friend to everyone. He enjoys his visits to the neighborhood bar, but is by no means a drunk. Miss Johnson: The maid Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet: Sixty-five years old, Mrs. Chauvenet is wealthy and a member of the Wednesday Forum. She also has a marriageable grandson about Myrtle’s age. Ruth Kelly, R.N.: Twenty-four yeas old and pretty, Ruth is head nurse at Chumley’s Rest, a sanitarium for mental patients. Duane Wilson: About twenty-eight years old, large, and muscular, Duane is the sanitarium’s atten- dant and strong arm. He admires Dr. Chumley, perhaps excessively. Dr. Lyman Sanderson: A young doctor of psychiatry, Dr. Sanderson is quite attractive and has caught the Ruth’s eye. Dr. William R. Chumley: In his late fifties, Dr. Chumley is the head of Chumley’s Rest. He is a con- fident, sometimes pompous, man. Betty Chumley: Dr. Chumley’s wife, Mrs. Chumley is a lovely woman about fifty-five years old. Judge Omar Gaffney: An elderly lawyer, Judge Gaffney represents the estate of Veta and Elwood’s late mother. E.J. Lofgren: An ultimately wise cab driver

Mary Coyle Chase:

Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Writing for the Human Spirit From Insights, 2002 By Marlo M. Ihler Mary Coyle Chase was born February 25, 1907, in Denver, Colorado. Her parents, Frank Bernard and Mary McDonough Coyle, came to the United States from Ireland, whose legends and folklore would later play a part in Mary’s writings. At the age of fifteen, she graduated from West High School (Denver) and attended both the University of Denver and the University of Colorado (Boulder). When she was eighteen, she became a newspaper reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, Denver’s oldest newspaper, and in 1928 she married fellow reporter, Robert L. Chase. She left the newspaper in 1931 to raise three sons and to work as a freelance writer. Throughout the rest of her life she wrote numerous children’s books, short stories, newspaper articles and plays. Harvey was by far her most successful work. She died in 1981 at the age of 74. Chase’s first plays brought her marginal success. Me, Third was produced by a Works Project Administration (WPA) theatre in Denver and was later produced on Broadway, renamed Now You’ve Done It. Her next play, Sorority House, was the most autobiographical of her plays. It played in Denver and was later made into a movie in 1939. Too Much Business, a children’s play, premiered in 1940 while A Slip of a Girl, a short comedy, was written and performed for army camps around the Denver area. In 1942 she began working on Harvey, a play about a friendly inebriate named Elwood P. Dowd and his invisible companion, a six-foot one-and-a-half inch white rabbit. Its inspiration came from two experiences in her life. The first was a dream she had about a psychiatrist being chased by a giant white rabbit. It reminded her of stories her Irish uncles had told about pookas, “mischievous goblins or spectors . . . in Irish folklore [who] appear only to those who believe” in them (Penrose Library Special Collections, www.penlib.du.edu/specoll/Chase/Chasebio.html). The second inspiration came when one day she took notice of her widowed neighbor who had lost her only son in war just two months earlier. In reflection Chase asked herself: “Would I ever possibly write anything that might make this woman laugh again?” (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 228. Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, p. 44). Hoping to bring laughter and respite to war-torn America, she set to work. The play took Chase two years to write, during which time she also wrote a weekly radio program for the Teamster’s Union. She would write in the evenings after her children were in bed and her husband had gone to work. Harvey was rewritten over fifty times and was finally submitted to New York producer Brock Pemberton who accepted it immediately. It opened to rave reviews on Broadway in 1944 and ran for four and a half years at the 48th Street Theatre. It played for a total of 1,755 performances, making it one of the longest running shows in Broadway history. Critic Louis Nichols was pleasantly surprised by Harvey, calling it “one of the delights of the season” (New York Times, 11 Nov. 1944). Other reviewers attributed its overwhelming success to “its escapist theme [that] appealed to audiences trying to take leave of the harsh realities of the world . . . during World War II” (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 228. Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, p. 45). Following its success on Broadway, Chase received the Pulitzer Prize for Harvey as the best drama of the 1944-45 season. It also grabbed Hollywood’s attention. A 1947 New York Times article reported that Universal-International purchased the play with intent of making it a movie for $1 million, more than any previously purchased play or book. In 1950 the movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Josephine Hull was also a great success, the latter receiving an Oscar for her performance.

6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Chase continued to write, but nothing brought the kind of recognition and success that Harvey had. Between 1952 and 1974, she wrote seven more plays and nine books, most of which she used as the basis for her plays. Her works were usually a satirical view of current American life. Her play Bernadine (1952) ran for 157 performances on Broadway and was later made into a movie by 20th Century-Fox. Midgie Purvis, a work based on a character from another of her plays, premiered in 1961 but received negative reviews and was her last play produced on Broadway. She decided at this point to refocus her writing efforts. She wanted to develop meaning- ful theatre for children that would in turn help create future audience members. In addition, she had no desire to write for audiences that could hurt her like those she had encountered in the past. She retreated to writing literature and plays solely for children. Mrs. McThing (1952) was the first American play written for children to be produced successfully on Broadway. Her children’s novel, The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden (1968), earned her a nomination for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award for children’s literature (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 228. Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, p. 48, 51). In recent years she has received posthumous recognition for her literary contributions and been inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame and the Colorado Performing Arts Hall of Fame. Her manuscripts, personal correspondence, and play revisions are archived at the University of Denver’s Penrose Library and the Library of Special Collections at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Chase believed in writing for the human spirit and her audience and in making people laugh. She endeared herself to the American public, despite often poor reviews by critics. Her philosophy of life was one that Elwood P. Dowd reiterates in Harvey: “My mother used to say to me ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.’ For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant” (Dramatists Play Service, Inc. Harvey, Act 3, p. 64).

Almost Magical Relationship Is the True Center From Insights, 2002 By Elaine Pilkington

Utah Shakespeare Festival 7 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Opening on November 1, 1944, Harvey ran for 1,775 performances and won the Pulitzer Prize for the best drama of the 1944-45 season (Kathleen M. Gough, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 228: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Second Series [The Gale Group, 2000], ). What accounts for the initial criti- cal acceptance, worldwide popularity, and lasting success of this seemingly simple tale written by a Denver newspaper reporter and freelance correspondent? Is it the escapism, the farce, or the fantasy? Or is it the deeper perceptions and human truths the play reveals that make it as enjoyable for today’s audiences as it was for a country fighting a world war? Mary Chase, the daughter of working class American Irish parents, “said that the idea for Harvey came . . . in 1942 [when she] . . . saw a neighbor, a middle-aged woman, walking slowly toward the bus stop. As she told Eleanor Harris in 1954, ‘She was a widow who had worked for years to send her only son through college. The day I looked at her, her boy had been dead about two months, killed in action in the Pacific. I asked myself . . . could I ever possibly write anything that might make this woman laugh again?’” (Gough). The first production of Harvey warmed a war-wearied country and made it laugh again. Reviewers raved about the play. Joseph Wood Krutch wrote, “The whole play bubbles with sheer—as well as astonishingly unhackneyed—fun” (The Nation, November 18, 1944, p. 624); Lewis Nichols praised “its warm and gentle humor” (The New York Times, Section 2, November 12, 1944, p. 1); and Newsweek called it “one of the funniest comedies that has been Broadway’s luck in a long time” (“Harvey the Rabbit,” November 13, 1944, pp.82 3). Harvey created an almost serene world in which the greatest problem was the embarrass- ment Elwood P. Dowd causes his society-conscious sister Veta and her man-hungry daughter when he introduces everyone he meets to his beloved friend Harvey, an invisible six-foot one-and-a-half-inch pooka in the form of a rabbit. When Veta tries to commit Elwood to the Chumley’s Rest sanitarium to be rid of Harvey forever, Dr. Sanderson doubts her sanity, and she unwillingly becomes a patient herself. The laughs caused by this case of mistaken insanity have entertained audiences for years and might be sufficient in themselves to explain the play’s continued popularity, but the almost magical relationship of Harvey and Elwood is the true center of the play. Initially, it seems that Harvey is merely a figment of Elwood’s imagination or an alcohol- induced hallucination, but Veta’s statement that this situation is not Elwood’s fault, that she knows who is to blame, and her question to Myrtle Mae, “Is Harvey with him?” prepare us for her admission that she too has seen Harvey (Mary Chase, Harvey [New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1971], 9). Still it is easy to question his existence until he “speaks” to Wilson, an orderly at the Chumley’s Rest sanitarium, as he is reading in the encyclopedia, “’Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice. A wise but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum-pots, crack pots; and how are you, Mr. Wilson. How are you, Mr. Wilson? Who in the encyclopedia wants to know?” (33). Later we “see” Harvey as doors open and close and locks turn for no other apparent reason. Dr. Chumley sees him as well, asking Elwood “And where on the face of this tired old earth did you find a thing like him?” (62), concluding that he has “been spending . . . [his] life among fly-specks while miracles have been leaning on lamp-posts” (59). Awed by Harvey’s ability to move in and out of time, he wonders if perhaps the pooka would give him two weeks under a maple tree in Akron with a beautiful woman who reaches out “a soft white hand,” strokes his head, and says nothing but, “’Poor thing! Oh, you poor, poor thing!’” (63). Elwood, on the other hand, has never been able to think of any place he would rather be. “I always have a wonderful time just where I am” (62). With Harvey, he has carved out an idyl-

8 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 lic existence. Though still a member of the Country Club and the University Club, he has left behind the dances, horse shows, and notes on scented blue stationery from attractive women for Charlie’s Place, Eddie’s Bar, and the Pinochle Club at the Fourth Avenue Fire House. He and Harvey go to bars, have a drink or two, meet new people, talk to them, and warm themselves “in all these golden moments.” Having entered as strangers, they soon have friends who “tell about the big terrible things they have done. The big wonderful things they will do. Their hopes, their regrets, their loves, their hates. All very large because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar” (54). Elwood celebrates the least occasion, invites strangers to dine at his home, and finds nothing bad in anyone. When Dr. Chumley urges him to righteous indignation by telling him Veta “had commitment papers drawn up. She’s got your power of attorney and the key to your safety box. She brought you out here—” Elwood responds only with admiration, “My sister did all that in one afternoon? Veta certainly is a whirlwind.” (64). Elwood objects to nothing, “I plan to leave. You want me to stay. An element of conflict in any discussion is a good thing. It means that everybody is taking part and nobody is left out. I like that” (61). He agrees to take the injection that will change him into a normal human being, making it so that he will no longer see Harvey, because Veta wants him to and he has always believed that Veta should have what- ever she wants. He sums up his lifestyle when he tells Dr. Chumley that his mother used to tell him, “’In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.’ For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant” (64). Elwood freely admits, “I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to state that I finally won out over it” (49). Elwood doesn’t deny reality; he simply prefers the fantasy world of Harvey where more possibilities for contentment exist than in the conventional routine of “a perfectly normal human being.” As the taxi driver says, “You know what bastards they are!” (69). Elwood chooses to participate in an alternate version of reality, and by the end of the play, even Veta believes that the alternative is better. Harvey teaches audiences that we all have the power to choose happiness over sorrow, contentment over dissatisfaction, and pleasure over pain. Elwood chooses Harvey. Granted for the rest of us, the choice may not be offered; Harvey does not reveal himself to everyone, but if we should see him, shouldn’t we too participate in the fantasy?

Utah Shakespeare Festival 9 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880