Charlie Coyle, her older brother, had a strong impact on her sense of comedy, as she imitated his natural gifts at mimicry, one-liners, and comic routines.

In the 1920s, reporters typically worked in The Front Page tradition: putting in long hours, drinking hard, and stopping at nothing to beat the competition to a story.

Josephine Hull portrayed his increasingly concerned (and socially obsessed) sister Veta Simmons on Broadway originally, and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in the film.

[15] She is the only Coloradan to have won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and, in a field dominated by men, was the fourth woman to win the award, after Zona Gale (1921), Susan Glaspell (1931), and Zoe Akins (1935).

[16] Immediately after Harvey, Chase tried to repeat her success on Broadway with The Next Half Hour,[17] a play based on an autobiographical novel she had written called The Banshee.

In 1950, Harvey was made into a Universal Studios film, starring James Stewart, with Chase collaborating with Oscar Brodney in writing the screenplay.

[21] Bob Chase was a seasoned, "hard news" reporter, having worked at the Denver Express since 1922, covering the robbery of the US Mint and fighting against the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado state and local politics.

He was a founding member in 1936 (and named vice-president) of the Denver chapter of the American Newspaper Guild, a national labor union representing editors and reporters.

[23] While working on the musical adaptation, Say Hello to Harvey, in 1981, Mary Coyle Chase suffered a heart attack at her home in Denver and died at the age of 75.

[25] The production starred Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory), returning to Broadway after a successful run in the revival of The Normal Heart in the summer of 2011.

Harvey was directed by Scott Ellis and also featured Charles Kimbrough (Emmy nominee, Murphy Brown) in the role of psychiatrist William Chumley and Jessica Hecht as Veta.