In an emergency room of Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital not long ago, a tall woman lay stretched out on a table, looking like a Valkyrie about to be immolated on her shield. Her youthful, pretty face was contorted. An intern was gently examining two fingers of her left hand, which had just been crushed in a car door, causing no serious damage but a great deal of pain. Trying to anesthetize the patient with small talk, he asked: "What do you do?" The patient gripped a cotton pad soaked with smelling salts. and winced as she spoke. "Oh, dear God," she said, laughing and crying simultaneously. "I'm a humorist."
A few months from now, the incident will undoubtedly appear in print, considerably embellished, and the opening sentence may well be something breezy like "There is an automobile loose on the streets of New York with two of my fingers." This will be followed by several hundred words about the professional sadism of doctors, the difficulty of opening a jar of instant coffee with one hand bandaged and the intricacies of Blue Cross ("Until now I'd always thought the term 'major medical had something to do with the armed services"). Undoubtedly there will also be a report on how at 3 a.m. the throbbing of a finger brings thoughts of gangrene, death, the need of carrying more insurance, whether one's widower will simply mourn for years in silence, or whether he will remarry (Tammy Grimes? But can she cook?). The whole thing will be light, deft, charming, and fetch $3,000 from virtually any magazine, not to mention an eventual movie sale. Almost any intern, life insurance salesman, housewife and child over five will readily recognize the style of Jean
Kerr, one of the pleasantest humorists now working, a woman who can transform the ordinary vicissitudes of life into laughter, expertly turning next-to-nothing into molehills.
Even before the piece appears in print, her friends will hear excerpts, for anyone within the range of Jean Kerr's voice is a tryout audience. When friends go to see her new hit, Mary, Mary, Broadway's brightest, wittiest play since The Moon Is Blue (Warner Bros, bought it for more than $500,000), they are not surprised to recognize some of the best lines. For Jean Kerr writes as she talks, and she talks all the time. Once, at a party, a tape recording was made of Noel Coward singing; when it was played back, all that could be heard was Jean Kerr, talking. She is perfectly willing to listen to other people; it is simply that most people would rather listen to her. As a result, she expends so much energy on talking—her blue eyes flashing, her arms semaphoring —that she has little strength left for other physical effort. She is a stand-up comedian who sits down.