Fine Feathers on an Old Hat

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Jean Kerr is a witty woman, and the dialogue she has invented for "Mary, Mary" … is frequently fresh and funny. Admittedly, her jests are aimed at familiar targets—alimony, income taxes, food fads, Hollywood, sex, and beauty salons, for example—but she has a neat way with a phrase and her observations are usually astute. She also has the happy faculty of being able to turn off the drumfire of gags and let her characters display, without mawkishness, some very tender emotions. For all her skill, however, she has not been able to disguise entirely the fact that the central theme of her play is rather banal. (p. 124)

John McCarten, "Fine Feathers on an Old Hat," in The New Yorker (© 1961 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. XXXVII, No. 5, March 18, 1961, pp. 124, 126.∗

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