Back to Staunton State Park

It was a good day to hike at Staunton State Park.  The snake/deer metric was entirely favorable:

Walking along a trail, I came to a cabin that formerly belonged to playwright Mary Chase (1906-1981), a Denver gal, who was a journalist for the Rocky Mountain News from 1924 to 1931.  Her gentle fantasy Harvey won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1945.  Here is a Wikipedia picture of this accomplished Denverite:

Here is another picture.  She apparently was fond of that voluminous hat.

Here is a third picture.  She had such expressive eyes.  It is well known that Irish women have the power to mesmerize a man.

A still from the movie.  Jimmy Stewart was perfectly cast as the genial crackpot Elwood P. Dowd, who was best friends with a 6-foot pooka named Harvey.

Here are two bits of dialogue from the 1950 movie's screenplay that I have remembered for decades:

SANDERSON - You know we all must face reality, Dowd, sooner or later.

ELWOOD - Uh huh - Well, I wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.

...

ELWOOD - Oh, Doctor, I - I - (STAMMERS) Years ago, my mother used to say to me -- she'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be --' She always called me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.


Here is an excerpt from a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview with Mary Chase from late in her life:

“I came to write Harvey after having a bad flop on Broadway in the ’30s. I decided at that point that the theater was probably not for me and I settled down to raise my three boys. I had come to terms with myself and my life and I was quite happy. I was married to a wonderful man and had three fine boys. Then, one day in the early years of World War II, something happened which changed my life. Across the street from our house was an apartment house. As I was leaving every morning at 8:15 with my boys, a woman would emerge from the door of the apartment house and go in the opposite direction, to the bus to go downtown to work. I didn’t know the woman, but I heard she was a widow with one son in the Naval Air arm who was a bombardier in the Pacific. One day, I heard that her son was lost. Things like that were happening to so many people then, it wasn’t what jolted me so much as the fact that in a week or ten days I saw this woman leaving the apartment house, going a little more slowly to catch the bus to go back to work. She began to haunt me. Could I ever think of anything to make that woman laugh again? I knew she wouldn’t laugh at a comedy about sex or money or politics. I kept looking for ideas and rejecting them. Then, one morning, I awoke at five o’clock and saw a psychiatrist walking across our bedroom floor followed by an enormous white rabbit and I knew I had it. I worked on it for a year and a half and sent it to my friend, Brock Pemberton, Antoinette Perry’s partner. Antoinette Perry is a Denver woman (she became the director for Harvey), and I knew them both. They had produced my first play – a flop, a bad one. So I sent them this play, and it opened to rave reviews and ran four and one-half years. I came back to Denver after the opening and the woman across the street had moved, and I didn’t know where she moved so I never met her. But I kept receiving letters from people who had cousins and brothers and sons in the war, saying ‘We’ve seen the show and we’ve had the first laugh since.’ So I felt then that somehow, I had done what I set out to do.”

Resuming the account of today's hike...   Here is the placard describing Mary Chase's cabin and property.  She was about 65 at the time of the purchase.  (The odd coloration of the placard is due to the reflection of my orange shirt and faded blue jeans.)

And the cabin itself...

I would have gotten closer pictures, but the cabin appeared to be someone's current residence.  You can see a TV satellite dish fastened to the end of the porch.