Word: elwood
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Coyle Chase; produced by Brock Pemberton) is the funniest and most likable fantasy that Broadway has seen in years. Described in one sentence, this yarn about a balmy tosspot who knows an imaginary outsized rabbit named Harvey may suggest all the horrors of relentless whimsy. Distributed over three acts, Elwood P. Dowd and the hare of the dog that bit him become a delightful adventure in wackiness...
...thing is partly delightful because Playwright Chase (a former Denver newspaperwoman whom Dorothy Parker once called "the greatest undiscovered wit in the country") has written some immensely funny lines, and in Elwood has created a very special character-droll, daffy, warmhearted, touching. It is also partly delightful because Elwood, who on a stage could easily become incredible or dismaying, is played to perfection by veteran Vaudevillian Frank Fay (as is Elwood's harassed sister by Josephine Hull). Fay not only makes Elwood a fine fellow when he is riding high; he makes him an even finer one when...
...play's faults-an overextended first act, an undernourished last one, some rubbishy minor characters, some razzle-dazzle farce-are pretty well buried underneath its fun. Underneath it, too, lies the hint given by many humorists that wackiness may be the last word in wisdom. Harvey, says Elwood, is greater than Einstein-Einstein did away with time & space, but Harvey does away with time, space-and objections...
...straight Broadway role since he was a kid. As he sees it, he is playing entirely against himself: "There isn't a single Fay line in the whole part." But the performer with the large, tired face and the vague blue eyes is at least as distinctive as Elwood-and perhaps as quirky...
Just as Dr. Chumley, the psychiatrist at the sanatarium, is about to give Elwood a shot of Formula X to cure what supposedly ails him, the taxi driver who has brought the Dowds to the institution comes in for his money. Vita and Myrtle find they're fresh out, so they stop the injection and tell Elwood to pay the man. Elwood in his pleasant and disarming way discusses life with the cab driver, invites him over to the house for dinner, and makes the duped young fellow forget all about the $2.75. But the cabbie likes Elwood...