Please Don't Eat the Daisies (New York: Doubleday, 1957) is a best-selling collection of humorous essays by American humorist and playwright Jean Kerr about suburban living and raising four boys. The essays do not have a plot or through-storyline, but the book sold so well it was adapted into a 1960 film starring Doris Day and David Niven. The film was later adapted into a 1965-1967 television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller. Kerr followed up this book with two later best-selling collections, The Snake Has All the Lines and Penny Candy.
The introduction serves as yet another humorous essay, as Kerr describes how she came to be a writer.
Kerr begins the book with her take on parenting four small boys.
The trials and tribulations of an author who hopes her letters are being collected for future publication.
Kerr's take on the popular trend of writers moving to the country to reconnect with nature.
Kerr gives her own helpful hints on how to redecorate on a budget.
The author's experiences with dogs, large and small, through the years.
One of the principal sources for the later film, this essay tells how Kerr and her husband acquired their house in Larchmont, New York, complete with gargoyles, secret panels, and a 24-bell carillon that played the duet from Carmen at noon.
How to survive getting a play produced.
Musings from the self-proclaimed most experienced audience member in America.
A parody of Stephen Vincent Benét's "John Brown's Body", which mixes in Mike Hammer and gangsters.
A take-off of Francoise Sagan's A Certain Smile .
Kerr muses on the state of school productions of holiday shows through the years.
Another essay on the joys of parenting.
Again, Kerr muses on coping with children.
One of many essays Kerr wrote on the subject of diets and dieting.
Kerr's take on hospital stays, doctors, nurses, and the need to insist on patients' rights.
In yet another satirical jab, Kerr included an index in the book, but with only the page numbers from the original magazines in which the pieces appeared.
The book achieved the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list in February, 1958. [1] Kerr's "wryly observant style" reminded Washington Post critic Richard L. Coe of James Thurber, E. B. White, and Cornelia Otis Skinner. [2]
Kirkus Reviews noted
Funny and refreshing, her maternal moments will find a sympathetic hysteria among others bedeviled by strident striplings and a perfect antidote toward accepted currently child raising programs: her take-offs, of Sagan, in Don Brown's Body, and her incisive words on writers (like E. B. White – leve majesti indeed) who move to the country – these are gifted and good.
Each short piece, from the introduction to the index, is loaded with laugh-out-loud-remarks, situations and ideas. [3]
In 1960, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a film adapted from the book, directed by Charles Walters with a screenplay by Isobel Lennart. It starred Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Spring Byington, Richard Haydn, Patsy Kelly, and Jack Weston. [4] A storyline was created for the film, involving Day as Kate Robinson Mackay, a housewife married to Lawrence "Larry" Mackay (Niven), a newly hired New York City drama critic. In his first assignment, Larry must review a new show produced by his best friend, and he is forced to pan it. Meanwhile, a search for a new home for the family — who ultimately settle in the fictional rural town of Hooton — leaves Kate dealing with the kids, carpenters, decorators, and the new neighbors by herself.
The film was in turn adapted as a television series that ran from 1965 to 1967 (58 half-hour episodes) starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller as Joan Nash, a newspaper columnist, and John Nash, a college professor, raising their four sons in fictional Ridgemont, New York.
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
Prozac Nation is a memoir by American writer Elizabeth Wurtzel published in 1994. The book describes the author's experiences with atypical depression, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer. Prozac is a trade name for the antidepressant fluoxetine. Wurtzel originally titled the book I Hate Myself and I Want To Die but her editor convinced her otherwise. It ultimately carried the subtitle Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir.
Walter Francis Kerr was an American writer and Broadway theatre critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals as well as the author of several books, generally on the subject of theater and cinema.
Bonjour Tristesse is a novel by Françoise Sagan. Published in 1954, when the author was only 18, it was an overnight sensation. The title is derived from a poem by Paul Éluard, "À peine défigurée", which begins with the lines "Adieu tristesse/Bonjour tristesse..." An English-language film adaptation was released in 1958, directed by Otto Preminger.
Jean Kerr was an American author and playwright who authored the 1957 bestseller Please Don't Eat the Daisies and the plays King of Hearts in 1954 and Mary, Mary in 1961.
The Stone Diaries is a 1993 novel by Carol Shields.
Hotel du Lac is a 1984 novel by English writer Anita Brookner. It centres on Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey, Mrs Pusey's daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.
Eye of the Devil, also known by its working title 13 or Thirteen, is a 1966 British mystery horror film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Donald Pleasence and Sharon Tate. Adapted from the 1964 novel Day of the Arrow by Philip Loraine, the movie is set in rural France. It was shot at the Château de Hautefort and in England. The film's plot concerns a family inheritance of an estate shrouded by a mysterious and highly ritualistic veil of secrets, and the investigation that follows in trying to uncover the meaning of these ominous peculiarities.
A Certain Smile was originally published in French as Un certain sourire by the Paris publisher Juillard in 1956. It was the second novel by Françoise Sagan and was written in two months. Two translations into English then followed in 1956. That by Anne Green was published by E.P. Dutton in New York and that by Irene Ash was published by John Murray in London, followed in the same year by a Penguin Books paperback edition. The story is related by a Parisian student who has an experimental love affair with a much older man.
Goldilocks is a musical with a book by Jean and Walter Kerr, music by Leroy Anderson, and lyrics by the Kerrs and Joan Ford.
Charles Powell Walters was an American Hollywood director and choreographer most noted for his work in MGM musicals and comedies from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Patricia Crowley is an American actress. She was also frequently billed as Pat Crowley.
Janis Paige was an American actress and singer. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Please Don't Eat the Daisies is a 1960 Metrocolor comedy film in CinemaScope starring Doris Day and David Niven, made by Euterpe Inc., and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The movie was directed by Charles Walters and produced by Joe Pasternak, with Martin Melcher as associate producer.
Mark Miller was an American stage and television actor and writer who starred in over 30 plays and made more than forty appearances in television programs and films since 1953. He is best known for his roles as Bill Hooten in Guestward, Ho!, as Jim Nash in the Please Don't Eat the Daisies TV series and as Alvie in the movie he wrote and produced, Savannah Smiles.
Please Don't Eat the Daisies is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 14, 1965 to September 2, 1967. The series was based upon the 1957 book by Jean Kerr and the 1960 film starring Doris Day and David Niven.
Separate Tables is a 1958 American drama film starring Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, and Wendy Hiller, based on two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan that were collectively known by this name. Niven and Hiller won Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively for their performances. The picture was directed by Delbert Mann and adapted for the screen by Rattigan, John Gay and an uncredited John Michael Hayes. Mary Grant and Edith Head designed the film's costumes.
Laura Moriarty is an American novelist.
John Michael Kerr was an American editor, psychologist, and author raised in New York City. He was best known for his 1993 nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, which explores an episode in the history of psychoanalysis. It examined the relationship between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein.
Flip Mark is an American film and television actor. He is known for playing the role of Brook Hooten in the American sitcom TV series Guestward, Ho!.