Mary Wickes: I Know I've Seen That Face Before

5. Miss Bedpan

83 C H a P t e r f i v e Miss Bedpan mary was reHearsing SKYLARK witH gertrude lawrenCe at tHe Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, in August 1939 when she learned of the part that would cement her career. She received a letter from Irving Schneider of the Sam Harris production office, telling her about “a new farce-comedy” by Kaufman and Hart that would be “ideal for you.” The play was called Such฀Interesting฀People, but shortly before previews it would be renamed The฀Man฀Who฀Came฀to฀Dinner. In the play, a famous man of letters suffers a fall while traveling and is forced to recuperate in a stranger’s home. Sheridan Whiteside becomes a houseguest of the worst sort—overbearing and condescending, barking orders right and left, upending the lives of the good-hearted people who extend care and kindness. Mary played Miss Preen, Whiteside’s horrified private nurse, a well-meaning woman who tries her best to establish some order in the house, but who—humiliated by the verbal assault of names like “Miss Bedpan”—is ultimately pushed too far, exploding in a satisfying burst of resentment. Preen is memorable because the character always inspires applause: She gets to tell Whiteside exactly what she thinks of him, giving voice to the audience’s own distaste for the lead character. And she does so in a bonafide hit. The play was a smash success by any measure, playing for seven hundred and thirty-nine performances at the Music Box Theatre. Many predicted it was destined for the same success as Kaufman and Hart’s You฀Can’t฀Take฀It฀With฀You, which ran eight hundred and thirty-eight performances, and they were nearly right. The฀ Man฀Who฀Came฀to฀Dinner was so popular that Stage magazine reprinted it in entirety in its November 1940 issue, accompanied by a photo of Mary as Preen telling off Whiteside, played with bluster by Monty Woolley. The show quickly became a staple of the regional, revival, and summer stock circuits. Whiteside is based on the effete critic and Algonquin m i s s b e d Pa n 84 Roundtable wit Alexander Woollcott, and characters who come and go during his convalescence are none-too-subtle riffs on Gertrude Lawrence , Noel Coward, and Harpo Marx. Mary, without an agent, signed a run-of-the-play contract on August 25, 1939, paying her $75 a week, 50 percent more than she made in Skylark. The show began a week of tryouts at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium in Hartford, Connecticut, then proceeded to Boston’s Plymouth Theatre for two weeks. The Boston try-out was extended a week to allow Kaufman and Hart to work on the third act, delaying the play’s New York opening until October 16. Both out of town and in New York, the reviews were sensational. “Preposterously, extravagantly, terrifically funny,” exclaimed the Boston Evening฀American. The New฀York฀Sun enthused, “Those first-night howls must have been heard as far away as Mr. Woollcott’s sacred island,” referring to the critic’s home on Neshobe Island, New Hampshire, where he entertained the literary crowd. Opening night brought out theatrical royalty: Edna Ferber, Oscar Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Lillian Hellman , Martin Beck, Bennett Cerf, and Dwight Deere Wiman were in the audience, as were Clifton Webb, Natalie Schafer, Norma Shearer, and Harpo Marx. Mary received opening night telegrams from major Broadway stars—Ethel Merman, Katherine Cornell, Gertrude Lawrence, Billy Miles, Margalo Gillmore, and Glenn Anders—as well as lyricist Dorothy Fields, Stockbridge’s Billy Miles, and David Kent Orthwein, who, like Mary, left his St. Louis family to pursue a theatrical career (he had the year before appeared with Mary in Father฀Malachy’s฀Miracle). Mary adored working with Kaufman, who gave her great latitude, and she became his favorite comedienne. “There are lots of famous stories of his directing, where he was saying, ‘Count to four, then do this.’ He never did that with Mary, ever, because she heard it exactly the way he heard it when he and Moss were writing it down. He was absolutely uncanny on the rhythms and the hearing of things. He just knew exactly how she was going to sound,” says Kaufman’s daughter and Mary’s friend, Anne Kaufman Schneider. One example is Preen’s big exit, which may have been the only time Kaufman suggested Mary change the way she deliver a line. As Preen storms out, she...