In 1942, part-time playwright and full-time mother Mary McDonough Coyle Chase (1906 - 1981) looked over her back fence in Denver and caught sight of her widowed neighbor. The woman's only son had been killed in action only two months before. Sadly, Mrs. Chase reflected: could anything she was able to write ever make her poor neighbor laugh again?

Just about the same time, Mary Chase had a dream in which a psychiatrist was being chased by a giant white rabbit. The dream reminded her of the enchanting stories told to her as a child by her Irish uncles, tales of the "Pooka," mischievous creatures of Irish folklore who would appear and speak only to those who believed in them. Faery specters from the other side of the veil, they could terrorize or delight, but didn't do any lasting harm.

Chase set to work on a play about a man who befriends a Pooka, a play that she was determined would bring laughter back to heartbroken people who had come through World War II. It took her two full years and fifty drafts. She wrote at night when her reporter husband went to work and her three sons were asleep. She wrote around her other gigs--some independent assignments from her old boss at the Rocky Mountain News and a regular weekly radio program for The Teamsters Union.

When she submitted the final draft to New York producer Brock Pemberton, he snatched it up immediately and Harvey opened to rave reviews in 1944. We never learn whether Mary Chase's bereaved neighbor got to laugh at the play, but many thousands of other war-weary Americans did. Harvey ran for four and a half years, playing a record 1,755 performances to packed houses, winning the Pulitzer Prize for 1944-45, and being memorably filmed in 1950 with James Stewart playing Elwood P. Dowd and garnering his fourth Oscar as Best Actor. Stewart would successfully revive the play in 1970 and Steven Spielberg has just announced a remake of the movie for next year.

Mary Coyle grew up in an Irish immigrant family, listening eagerly to her mother and her mother's brothers tells tales from the old country. She set to work as a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News even before graduating from the University of Colorado. In addition to general community and crime reporting, she wrote the society column, club notes, human interest stories, and was the "sob sister" for the paper - all great preparations for a career writing for the theatre. She was known to be able to focus her stories to manipulate the emotions of her audience. Finally, she married her colleague Robert Chase, who rose to be managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News, and settled down to raise her boys and write plays. Until Harvey inspired her, however, Chase had fairly indifferent success with plays that were produced but received little notice. Harvey tapped into both Chase's deepest memories and the great need of the American public to embrace something funny, tender, and positive - a need, no doubt, that never goes away.

After Harvey, Chase's formula of delicate enchantment and social satire didn't work anymore and the sophisticated New York critics were unkind. It was, after all, the era of Stanislavski, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Eugene O'Neill, and a more socially challenging drama. She turned to writing plays for children and her 1952 fantasy Mrs. McThing has been a beloved staple of children's theatres and schools ever since.

For Chase, as we see in Harvey, the world of gentle magic was always close at hand, easily accessible to those with heart and mind to see it. Just so, Pookas have, apparently, been surrounding us in literature all this while and we didn't know it. They are deft shape-shifters, often appearing as horses, rabbits, goats or dogs, able to twist time, and very capable of human conversation. While cunning tricksters, they also have been known to lead humans away from danger. Puck, Shakespeare's own Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, was a Pooka! He's "Pwca" in Welsh, "Bucca" in Cornish, "Puca" in Old Irish, and "Puck" or "Puca" in English. There are those who claim that Alice's White Rabbit, pocket-watch in hand and leading the child off down the rabbit-hole and into fantasy adventure, was definitely a Pooka. Believe it or not, there are Pooka-fans of a certain bear, a Pooh-Bear, and even of that imaginary tiger in "Calvin and Hobbs." There are ancient place-names referencing the Pooka, and sightings reported to this day. The point is, I think, that when you start noticing the Pooka, you begin to see them everywhere. And this, of course, is what happens to Elwood P. Dowd, a middle-aged, unmarried son who loses his mother and chooses to put aside his "smartness" along with his loneliness to become kindly, sociable, and open to other people. That he sees and meets Harvey isn't so unusual. What is unusual, and perfectly delightful, is that Harvey chooses to be Elwood's longtime constant friend.

Harvey, we learn, is also visible to some other people - who usually won't admit to seeing him. Unlike Elwood, they just have the wrong attitude. Sister Veta, just as lonely after her mother's death as her brother Elwood is, finds Harvey to be an embarrassing obstacle to her plans for social success. When she sees the giant white rabbit, she curses him and tells him where to go. And Harvey disappears. Psychiatrist Chumley wants Harvey in his life to use his magical abilities for selfish reasons. Harvey decides he'd rather be with Elwood. The generous, inebriated gentleman and the mythical invisible rabbit are mutually empowering.

Hoppin' down the bunny trail, anyone?