Daisy Mayme

Daisy Mayme (1926), a comedy by George Kelly. [Playhouse, 112 perf.] Cliff Mettinger ( Carlton Brickert) is a forty‐three‐year‐old real estate broker and a bachelor who has long been the principal support of his married sisters. When one of his sisters dies, he takes her daughter May ( Madge Evans) to Atlantic City to recover from her bereavement. To the dismay of Mettinger's surviving sisters, Olly Kipax ( Josephine Hull) and Laura Fenner ( Alma Kruger), he returns not only with May but with Daisy Mayme Plunkett ( Jessie Busley), an outgoing, slightly uncouth spinster. A horrified Laura is certain she knows Daisy Mayme's type: the sort of woman who “has no more home. . . than a tomcat” and who will “hang around fashionable hotels, with their ear to the ground.” The sisters set aside their animosities in an attempt to cool their brother's ardor for his newfound friend. Although she shrewdly fights back, they succeed in convincing Daisy that Cliff wants her solely as a companion for May. But Cliff proves he is fond of Daisy for herself. She agrees to marry him, purring, “I'll sit here in the lady's chair. I've always wanted to be a lady.” “When Daisy finally carries the fray,” Brooks Atkinson noted, “the audience is accordingly unable to rejoice over the triumph of virtue. For Mr. Kelly has carefully indicted every character in the play.” So unrelentingly observant a comedy commanded at best a modest audience, and only the healthy theatrical economics of the 1920s allowed the play to become a commercial success. It remains, however, a valid, if biting, portrait of aspects of American society, as illustrated by a 2003 revival Off Broadway.