Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 79

Who Mostly Copes in Her Delightful, Witty, Sophisticated, But Uncomplicated, Way v-- i I A. I -0. 1 CI-- fc i Hi 1 kV'" 4 I Mi By HUGH A. MULLIGAN (AP NmfMtvrat WHter) LARCHMONT, N. Y.

When Jean Kerr was turning out $300 magazine articles in the back seat of the 9-year-old family Chevy, parked a few blocks from her houseful of boisterous boys, she never considered herself a serious writer. "I consider a writer serious when he makes more than $20,000 a year," was the way she put It. That was five years ago. Today, two books, two movie sales, and a hit play later, Jean Kerr has had to revise her standards upward. Her royalties from the five companies of "Mary, Mary" one on Broadway (now in its third year), three on the road, and one in London average $20,000 a week.

And yet she still approaches her work with the same uncomplicated candor as when she heard MGM had paid $75,000 for the screen rights to her best seller, "Please Don't Eat the Daisies." "They must be out of their minds," she said. The venerable Chevy still holds down a place of honor in the Kerr garage, alongside a newer, more expensive vehicle, but its backseat recluse has moved on to larger, more comfortable quarters. Jean Kerr now works in a corner of the bedroom amid a colossal chaos of Coke bottles, cigaret butts, and disorderly mounds of manuscript that, as the children know from past experience, constitute the rubbled construction site of a new play. "I've got it spread out all over the place up there scene by scene," said the I pl Mother Wisconsin State Journal fully try to live with their disappointment at not having a basketball star for a father or a former Miss Rheingold for a mother. "I try to tell them it's not given for pro playwright when we called on her last week and found her in the throes of composing the very last scene.

"I've re-written those same four minutes 16 times. Walter keeps saying I'd better hurry up and finish before we have a fire." duct consumption," Mrs.Kerr has attempt ed to explain away the latter failing. I People Opinion The Kerrs reside in a pleasantly conform' ist Westchester county suburban town in SECTION 8, PAGE 5 SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1963 Jean Kerr looks up from the clipboard at which she often in the living room of the Kerr's Spanish (and other) style house in Larchmont, N.Y. Mrs. Kerr sometimes works here uhen her bedroom study is not available.

AP Newsfeaturn photo lEktV BOOKS it mimmmimmimmmmmimmmmmmmmmmmiimM The Interesting Chinese By Emily "China Only Yesterday." Hahn. Doubleday. $5.75. Husband's Noted Critic Walter, of course, is her husband, Walter Kerr, the distinguished drama critic of the New York Herald Tribune and a noted playright himself, author of "Sing Out Sweet Land," along with being a veteran Broadway director, the author of several books on the theater, and the co-author, with his wife, of a hit review, "Touch and Go," a disaster of a musical, "Goldilocks," and a touching drama, "Song of Berna-dette." He is also living proof that a critic can be loved. "I wouldn't write a note to the milkman without showing it to him first," says his admiring wife, who reads her work to him page by page and dutifully rewrites at his say so.

The habit dates back to their courtship days in Washington, D. when he was a drama professor and she a student at Catholic University. Their love survived the "God-awful" he wrote over her first assignment. Having a critic of Walter's eminence and withering wit in residence on a permanent consulting basis might not be every writer's idea of a balanced program of mental health. Nor would every critic relish the thought of honing his barbs on a household box office bonanza who can retaliate by cutting off his bank drafts.

No such intramural jealousies ruffle the customary con'usion of the Kerr household, where comics and critics abound in all shapes and sizes. Seventeen-year-old Chris, the oldest of the five Kerr boys, frequently finds himself doubting his mother's words, particularly when they are about him, and 4-year-old Gregory sometimes can be found eating them. eluded the time of the Boxer rebellion. A poverty-stricken student named Hung who became the fanatic "young brother of Christ" who led the Taiping rebellion. More recent and better-known figures, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, and Mao Tse-tung.

JOSEPH L. BENHAM bizarrely baroque, garrishly gothic, tortured tudor horror of a house that can best be described as neo-Daphne du Maurier. A jumble Of turrets and towers, topped off by a 32-bell carillon that bongs out a dance duet from "Carmen," the house once belonged to Charles King, an eccentric inventor who test drove Henry Ford's first -ar. Before that, it was the stables for a prosperous brewer's estate. Besides a stupendous view of Long Island Sound, it has an enormous oaken front door that once belonged to a church in New Rochelle, a leering lion on a door knocker that might have belonged to Bela Lugosi, a foyer fitted out with the portholes and panelling of an old Hudson river steamboat, assorted gargoyles and heraldic plaques, and an enclosed courtyard that might be Spanish or Moorish were it not for the two barroom mirrors looking down on the goldfish pond.

Add Basketball Hoop The Kerrs have entered into the spirit of the house by placing a basketball backboard in the courtyard, along with a statue of St. Francis and two cracked Venetian lions, by fitting, out Walter's study with 16 theater seats, so he can pursue his silent movie hobby, and by ringing the carillon as a curfew to summon the children home from play. "The neighbors don't seem to mind. Sometimes they ask us to ring it to get their kids to come home," said Mrs. Kerr.

She also tried to say a few things about her new play, but from the numerous asides, admonitions, threats and exhortations to the twins, who were thumping a basketball in the courtyard, to Gregory, who was stomping on the flower beds, and to Walter, who was busy typing in the next room, it was easy to see what she meant when she said, "Mostly, I cope." The conversation went something like this: "It's called 'Poor Richard' and it's about a poet who's mixed up. Colin, will you button that jacket? I don't want you out of school again. The title is from wU, you know how people say, 'poor so-and-so, he's so talented. If only he'd straighten That's Richard. Gregory, well you get off those new shoots? "I've been working on it since January.

It doesn't pay to spend too long on a play. You lose the energy of it. Better to have it rough and with energy than smooth and lifeless. Walter, would you mind bringing us a couple of Cokes? I'd have called for a child but they all seem to be busy. She Well Remembers "No, I'm not afraid that success will separate me from the everyday experiences of people I write about.

A writer makes a mistake in writing to please his sophisticated friends. It wasn't too long ago we were living on a professor's salary of $3,000 a year." Jean Kerr was born Brigid Jean Collins in Scranton, the daughter of an Irish immigrant contractor who had a rich resonant baritone, and a County Cork mother of great wit and cultured background who was a second cousin of Eugene O'Neill. At 8, Jean staked out her life's ambition in a bit of verse: "Dearer to me than the evening star A Packard car A Hershey bar Or a bride in her rich adorning Dearer than any of these by far Is to lie fat bed In the morning." At Scranton's Marywood College, where a nun influenced her to drop her first name the grounds that "only Irish washerwomen are named Biddie," Jean was convinced her height destined her for marriage to a basketball player. Then Walter. Best Sellers (Compiled by PublUhert, Weekly) FICTION 1.

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Johns. A place as complex as China, a people as fascinating as the Chinese and events as lively as those involving China and the West over 100 years are covered about as thoroughly and interestingly in this book as is possible in 400 pages. Though some scholars may despair of the practice, Miss Hahn a longtime resident of and neighboring Hong Kong keeps the book moving by concentrating on happenings and the people who made them happen, rather than the order in which they happened during the usually turbulent years between the early 1840s and the late 1940s. The volume is a part of Doubleday's Mainstream of the Modern World series. As with most popular histories, the peoplethe Chinese and their Manchu conquerors and the "barbarians" they sought 0 vainly to keep out usually are more interesting than the events, though the accounts of the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions and the revolution which turned China into a republic are by no means dull.

In fact, it's hard to imagine a more varied and vivid lot than the major and minor characters of the book such as: The British trader who threw his fine china down the stairs or out a window at the end of each meal because it was easier to get a new set than to trouble the servants to come upstairs for the old. The concubine who became the Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi, whose turbulent reign in- Short Stories Etched in Acid "Habeas Corpus and Other Stories," by Peter Green (World $3.95) Not Miss Rheingold In between, the 13-year-old twins, Colin and Johnny, and 10-year-old Gilbert man- showed up to witness the school's production of "Romeo and Juliet," for which Jean was stage manager. They met at the dance that weekend. He induced her to take some summer courses at Catholic University, stay on for graduate work, and eventually marry the teacher. 'Touch and Go' a Hit Together and a a ely, the Kerrs brought a succession of plays to Broadway from Catholic University.

"Song of Berna-dette" ran only three performances. "Jenny Kissed Me" went to 20. But "Touch and Go" was a hit, and Walter soon found himself in New York, first as critic for Commonweal, then for the Herald Tribune. At last, Jean realized her Harry Lauder-esque ambition of sleeping in most mornings. On opening nights, whether sitting in aisle seats well down toward the stage for his review -of someone else's opening or holding down the last seats in the very last row for one of hers I can duck out in an alley and be sick the Kerrs project personal and professional devotion to each other.

Their rapport is so exquisite as to raise hackles in some quarters. Producer David Merrick, who had suffered several of Walter's more searing slings and arrows and yet had been captivated by his wife's between-the-acts bant-. er, once came to the conclusion that she was feeding him the lines that were killing him at the box office. In an interview with a gossip columnist, Merrick accused Jean Kerr of slyly nudging Walter in the dark at appropriate intervals to indicate where the coup de grace should be applied. Jean Kerr, who stares hot rivets from her soft blue eyes if anyone so much as whispers in her vicinity of the theater, was outraged.

"Why," she fumed, "I wouldn't talk when the curtain is up anymore than I would dump babies from their carriages." The Nudges Explained But it was Waltr who deftly took the measure of "The Abdominable Showman," as Merrick is sometimes called, in an acidulously suave Sunday column. "She likes me, that crazy girl," he explained the nudges. "Surely, Mr. Merrick, someone, somewhere, has liked you well enough to give you a little dig in the elbow. No? Ah, well." Gallantly or perhaps cowardly, depending on how the offering fares Walter usually gives way to a substitute reviewer from his paper when a Jean Kerr play is up for consideration.

Just the thought of him shooting down 'one of hers, however, has inspired both a Broadway play and a movie. For all her success in so many fields, Jean Kerr still hasn't decided whether being a novelist or a playwright is more satisfying. Plays get her out of town for welcome bouts with room service and a respite from the giddy world of the Kerr-Hilton, as they term the Larchmont manse. "But," says Jean, "books in the long run are far more comforting. The impact lasts longer.

It's wonderful to see people laugh and clap, but It's nice, too, to get letters from housewives and elderly Jesuits, saying how you saved their sanity years after you've written a piece. With a play, someone is always getting sick out in Chlcaga with the road company, and flops can be so heartbreaking. Even now, I don't see how I possibly can go through another opening night." The smart money In Shubert Alley saya barbed wire couldn't keep her away when "Poor Richard" comes to town. Know Your Madisonian: Adele G. Stahl Eight entertaining English short stories, etched in acid, and mostly about unpleasant people.

They include a married man whose mistress apparently dies of a heart attack as they make love; a nymphomaniac actress who arrives with her troupe at a remote airfield in Burma; a schoolboy having an affair with a schoolmistress; and a linguist whose desire for a university post outweighs any humane instinct he may have. UPI Wisconsin iStatc Journal A lt tf" Niwspiptr only it was under a different she explained. Moving to Madison in 1940, she served as the bureau's assistant director before heading it. Miss Stahl heads a staff of five professional nurses, four of whom are educational consultants. Miss Stahl has had considerable experience in nursing education.

From 1932 until 1934 she was an instructor in nursing at her alma mater, and from 1935 to 1938 she was an instructor in child care there. For the next two years, she taught at Syracuse Memorial hospital in New York, where, in 1938, she became assistant director of nursing education. During World War II, she was recruitment olficer for the U. S. Cadet Nurse Corps, a job for which she was paid $1 a year.

The job had Its benefits, though, because It enabled her to visit nearly every city in the state. Miss Stahl, who lives at 909 High is a member of the Madison Civics club, the American Society for Public Administration, the National League for Nursing, and the American Nurses Asm. She's also been president of the Madison district of the Wisconsin Nurses Assn. Bccauce of the increasing pressures of her work, she doesn't have the free time she once had. An ardent fisherman who has fished Madison area lakes and has taken fUhlng trips to Canada, she's found less time for this activity in recent years.

Another hobby reading biographies has also had to take back seat to her work. She considers the occasional teaching she's called upon to do at the University of Wisconsin real pleasure, "I'd like to be able to do more teaching, but the job I'm doing has to be she declared. Because she liked working with people, Adele G. Stahl chose nursing as a career. Now, as director of the Wisconsin Department of Nurses, she's involved with nursing on a broader scale than she ever imagined.

She heads the unit of state government which insures that nurses receive proper training and follow ethical procedures in their practices. Miss Stahl, who was graduated in nurs-Ing education from Western. Reserve University in 1931, has served both as a nurse and as a nursing instructor. In her present job, she's involved with both areas. "The Wisconsin department is the only such state deportment in the United States," aaid Miss Stahl, "and this has lent prestige to nursing here." In other states, many of the duties of the department are administered by boards.

Committees of examiners for nurses and scholarships for graduate registered nurses are administered by Miss Stohl's department, which is also the policy-making and standard-setting body for nursing education. Another rcsponsioility is collecting information and suggesting action against nurses charged with malpractice. The state has 23 professional schools of nursing, eight schools of practical nursing, and 20 associate units where students get part of their education. The department keeps close tabs on all of them. Director of the department since 1949 when It was created by tlic Legislature, Mlsa Stahl also served for a year aflcr graduating from college as a nurse at a Cleveland hospital.

She become tlie stato director of the Bureau of Nursing Education for Die Stato Board of Health here In 1047. "1 did the same work then as 1 do now, f' i i (. i Ait IndtBtndtnt Ntwipsptr Edittd by The Witconiin Stats Journal Published by Madiion Nrwtpipn, Inc. Don Anderson Publisher H. Fitzpsrrick Minsging Editor Helen Mathoton Asst.

Managing Editor W. C. Robbins Editor, Editorial Page Clenn Miller City Editor oteph Capossela News Editor H. E. McClelland State Editor Robert Bjorkljnd farm Editor Donald Devies Sunday Editor Roger Cantwell Sports Editor Editorial Board Don Anderson, Chairman H.

Fitspetrlck, W. C. Robklnt, John Newhouse, Helen Mathoton, fred J. Currin, Robert Pjorkluitd ADELE C. mill, -stock tr twm4 sctwnwue.