John Loves Mary

John Loves Mary (1947), a comedy by Norman Krasna. [ Booth Theatre, 423 perf.] John (William Prince) returns home from the war with an English bride, but she is not his sweetheart; rather, she is the fiancée of a buddy who saved his life in battle. Since the girl is English, marrying her was the only way to get her into the country promptly. John's real love is Mary (Nina Foch), and her parents insist they marry at once. Obviously, John cannot until he divorces his English bride. Rather than simply tell the true story, John piles lie on lie, each one further complicating matters. Mary's father is a Senator, so the lies have far‐reaching but ultimately harmless effects. Several critics suggested that the play was a return to the seemingly moribund tradition of “farce‐comedy,” while Ward Morehouse of the Sun concluded it was a play “definitely of the manufactured variety, and one for which there would be no second and third acts if the simple truth has been told in the first.”