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

Talk about working from home. . . . Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat chronicles the story of how 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 Williams’s The Glass Menagerie) and remain to this day one of the most beloved and underappreciated works of the twentieth century.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction. Her Life Changed Forever Act I. Harvey Begins One. The Coyles and the McDonoughs Two. Li’l Mary Three. The Lure of the Theater Four. Leaving the Nest Five. The Raging Reporter Six. She Meets Her Man Seven. The Housewife Act II. Mary Chase, Playwright Eight. The Federal Theatre Project Nine. The Broadway Flop Ten. Time to Regroup Eleven. The Pooka Twelve. Back to Broadway Thirteen. It’s a Hit Fourteen. A New Reality Fifteen. The Pulitzer Prize Sixteen. Hollywood Act III. After Harvey Seventeen. Settling Down Eighteen. New Beginnings Nineteen. Television Twenty. Ladies First Twenty-One. Professor Mary Twenty-Two. Ageless Harvey Twenty-Three. Harvey, the Musical Twenty-Four. The Curtain Falls Twenty-Five. The Final Review Epilogue

About the Author :
Mimi Pockross is an award-winning freelance writer who specializes in writing about the arts, education, and family. She has written articles for many local and national publications including the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Heritage, and The Denver Post.Like Mary Chase, she is a wife, mother, and grandmother who also writes, and like Mary Chase, she is a longtime resident of Colorado.

Review :
It isn’t a stretch to imagine that at any given time, the play Harvey (that beloved American comedic chestnut immortalized by the 1950 film version starring Jimmy Stewart) is being produced in some professional repertory, regional, community, or school theater. We are long overdue, argues arts writer Pockross to give playwright Mary Coyle Chase the serious critical attention she deserves. Chase herself frequently professed that she was “just a housewife and mother who wrote plays,” but her prodigious literary catalogue of 14 plays (including two other Broadway successes besides Harvey, three screenplays, and several award-winning children’s books) are validation that she did a lot more than pull a six-foot-tall rabbit out of her hat. Pockross illuminates key life events that would become thematic tropes in Chase’s plays and examines the social and art scene in early to late 20th-century Denver. Pockross also covers Chase’s beginnings as a “sob sister” newspaperwoman and explores her life with her husband and three sons. Harvey certainly takes center stage, but all of Chase’s literary works are covered here. This certainly will not be the last word on Mary Coyle Chase, but it’s a great opening act. This story of Chase (whose dream of a giant rabbit chasing a psychiatrist inspired a play about everyone’s favorite Pooka) is a must for theater geeks everywhere. [Pockross] shows how Chase has been historically dismissed because she was a female playwright who lived and worked outside New York, specialized in comedies, and often wrote for children. She also demonstrates how Chase was deemed an amateur because she was a wife and mother . . . Pockross attempts to reverse years of neglect with this new biography, and to a great extent, she succeeds. . . . Overall, Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat: The Amazing Story of Mary Coyle Chase makes compelling reading for those who want to learn more about a forgotten writer, or anyone with a soft spot for an invisible rabbit. A very enjoyable and interesting story that needs to be told. A well-researched and detailed biography of Pulitzer Prize–winner Mary Chase. Her beloved play, Harvey, written in 1944, is still being produced today in theatres around the world. A charming, intimate portrait of Denver playwright Mary Coyle Chase... weaves history into the narrative to give the necessary perspective on the era in which Chase’s blockbuster Harvey was written and further explores far beyond the Harvey narrative in detailed explanation of the totality of Chase’s work including her extensive efforts with children’s plays. The shallow thought Mary Chase just sought to entertain with Harvey as an escapist fantasy. Hidden behind the surface was an acute critic with a larger vision and message. Mimi Pockross begins to peak behind the scenes in this much needed book. Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat is a warm and informative story of Denverite Mary Coyle Chase who wrote the endearing and inspirational play Harvey that is known and loved by generations of American theater and movie lovers. Mimi Pockross has created a warm and human profile of playwright Mary Coyle Chase, author of the stage and screen comedy classic Harvey. Pockross’s biography provides a lovingly detailed vision of how Chase tenaciously persevered at her craft and eventually succeeded writ large, adding to the American comedic canon at a time when few women were able or permitted to do so.