Mary McDonough Coyle Chase

(b. Denver 1907-d. Denver 1981; b. Crown Hill Cemetery)

Chase wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Harvey, one of Broadway’s most popular and longest-running hits. In more than a dozen other comedies, Chase also satirized contemporary American life, earning praise from Dorothy Parker as "the greatest unacclaimed wit in America."

Mary learned storytelling from her Irish-born mother Mary McDonough Coyle, her father and her uncles. Their fairy tales of banshees, leprechauns and pookas would later reappear in her stories and plays. Mary attended Denver schools, graduating from West High in 1922 at the age of 15. Her childhood home, a small one-story cottage at 532 W. 4th Ave. in a working class neighborhood, has been designated a Denver Landmark in her honor.

Mary Coyle attended the University of Denver and the University of Colorado before joining the Rocky Mountain News, Denver’s oldest newspaper. An attractive, shapely, black-haired woman who dressed stylishly, she wrote a newspaper column the called "Society Notes."

In 1931, Mary left the newspaper to write plays, while also working as a free-lance writer of many articles, short stories and children’s books. Hoping to bring laughter to wartime America, Chase wrote a comedy about a six-foot tall imaginary white rabbit. Harvey opened on Broadway in 1944 and ran for 1,775 performances, also becoming a successful 1950 Universal-International Pictures movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

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