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Backstage, the Kerrs are respected as genuine professionals, even if Jean can now and then be persuaded to change a line by an actor who calls her "sweetie." Together they have set some sort of theatrical record, he as a director and she as playwright, for seriously antagonizing almost no one, despite the frenetic, hypersensitive atmosphere of pre-Broadway rehearsals, when nearly everyone behaves—as Jean Kerr puts it—"as if they had just been rescued from burning stables." The lone, whinnying exception is Elaine Stritch, frenetic, hypersensitive star of their unfortunate 1958 musical, Goldilocks. "Jean and Walter," says Elaine, "are like the classroom mom and dad.
Once in rehearsal I got into a fight with someone, and Walter walked right down the aisle and shouted up at me: 'Elaine, go to your dressing room!' Dig that. The teacher complex. She always talks as though she'd memorized her own writing. You want to hear Jean say, 'Gee, you were great, Elaine.' Instead, you get nothing but humor 24 hours a day. They're a clean-cut couple. She drinks beer and he goes in for Cokes and Hershey bars. Jean should swing a bit with a Gibson and find herself."
Poems Every Sunday. But Jean finds herself in her family. "Children run longer than plays," she says, and the five best testimonials to her are Christopher, Colin, John, Gilbert and Gregory Kerr. Seldom have boys been so publicly caricatured by a mother and seldom have five boys picked up so much character from a mother (and father) in private. They are independent and unselfconscious, too mature to expect Christmas more than once a year but too normal to settle for a single Halloween. Every Sunday evening they recite poems—from Milton to Hopkins—that they have learned during the week; on other nights they play chess and Monopoly with their father, and hold word contests with their mother. She has retired from "therapy games," and is planning a casual piece on how to lose quickly at checkers.
When she is not amplifying their deeds in writing, their mother can talk about them with fond objectivity. "Chris is the funny one," she says. "John is serious, like his father. John has only been struck about three times in his life; Chris we hit about three times an hour. John's reflective. On election night at bedtime, John said, 'How will I know if Kennedy gets elected?" I said. 'I'll come in and kiss you.' He said, Tm a heavy sleeper. You'd better slap me.'
"All the boys are interested in what Walter and I do," she continues her assessment. "They even ask about box-office grosses. Get the picture? But they're casual, too. Colin has read only about five chapters of Please Don't Eat the Daisies. He says,. 'Maybe I'll finish it—if I have to go to the hospital or something.' As for Gilbert, he is a born conformer, and giddy. Gregory's only 2^. Even so, he's a little slow. His father asked him, 'Where is Mommy?' a couple of days ago, and he looked under the coffee table."