Frank Fay was an American vaudeville comedian and film and stage actor. He is considered an important pioneer in stand-up comedy. For a time he was a well known and influential star, vaudeville's highest-paid headliner, earning $17,500 a week in the 1920s, but he later fell into obscurity, in part because of his abrasive personality and fascist political views. He played the role of Elwood P. Dowd in the 1944 Broadway play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase. He is best known as actress Barbara Stanwyck's first husband. Their troubled marriage is thought by some to be the basis of the 1937 film A Star Is Born, in which the previously unknown wife shoots to stardom while her husband's career goes into sharp decline. Fay was notorious for his bigotry and alcoholism, and according to the American Vaudeville Museum, "even when sober, he was dismissive and unpleasant, and he was disliked by most of his contemporaries".

Harvey is a 1944 play by the American playwright Mary Chase. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work in 1945. It has been adapted for film and television several times, most notably in a 1950 film starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull.