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What, No Nudges? Over the years be fore Brooks Atkinson's retirement as thi Times's critic last spring, the Kerrs an< Atkinsons became particular friends "What Jean and Oriana thought abou the theater was often more interestm; than what we thought," said Atkinsoi last week. "They were less inhibited. The) were more slashing than we could be." Producer David Merrick, the Shubert Al ley Catiline, came to that conclusion some time ago, claiming that Jean Kerr influenced her husband during performances by a series of codelike nudges. Kerr responded in print with a riposte that made Merrick look like 44 kinds of fool, or roughly six short of the mark. "She likes me, that crazy girl," wrote Kerr. "Surely, Mr. Merrick, someone, somewhere, has liked you well enough to give you a little dig in the elbow. No? Ah, well."
When plays end, Jean would almost rather take a cab than walk even 150 feet, the distance from the Billy Rose Theater to the editorial offices of the New York Herald Tribune. In his cubicle, Walter Kerr has 50 minutes to write. Jean sits near by and reads The Hollywood Reporter, Photoplay, even the scrapbooked reviews of former critics. Only on the way home by train, Walter's carbon in hand, does she begin to discuss the play with him. The talk goes on and on, as it does nearly every night, over several bottles of beer, until 3 or 4 a.m. In fact, "I don't think we've been to bed before i o'clock more than three times since we've been married," says Jean Kerr. "We wait around for the quiet."
Saint in the House. He is up by 10 and at work in his study, getting on with his next book, The Decline of Pleasure. She, meanwhile, is upstairs disproving his title —flaked out like Perrault's princess at least until i p.m. When they were married, he fondly told her that he would bring her coffee each morning, a custom that lasted some ten or twelve minutes. "The first time I brought it, having gotten up quietly," he recalls, "I gently woke her, and nearly got blown out of the room. She told me that must never, never happen again. And it never has."
The boys—excepting 2^-year-old Gregory—are packed off to school by Mabel
Groom, the Kerrs' most important asset after their talent. "Mrs. Kerr is a real gay gal," says Mabel—but not in the early hours of her day. Then, like the heroine of Mary, Mary, she doesn't grasp things: "I hear voices all right, but I can't pick out the verbs." After an urn or two of coffee, she begins to pick them out—on a typewriter in the third-floor master bedroom. She has given up using the celebrated Chevrolet as an office, "because I ran out of places to park. People would drive past and wave." She is still engagingly casual about her work, although, as she has remarked, "I consider any writer serious who makes more than $20,000 a year."