A writer, Kerr was known for dry wit about everyday life. “I write what I know,” she said. In order to get away from her noisy family and write, she often went out to the car and drove several blocks away. “There is nothing to do but write,” she once said, “after I get the glove compartment tidied up.”
Her first hit was the play Touch and Go (1949), and her 1961 play Mary, Mary was a huge hit, running on Broadway for more than 1,500 performances. But she is probably best known for her 1957 book, later adapted to a 1960 movie and then a 1965-1967 television series, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Kerr died from pneumonia on January 5 in New York. She was 80.