Wikipedia

Dodie Smith

Dorothy Gladys"Dodie"Smith(3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an Englishnovelistandplaywright.She is best known for writingI Capture the Castle(1948) and the children's novelThe Hundred and One Dalmatians(1956). Other works includeDear Octopus(1938) andThe Starlight Barking(1967).The Hundred and One Dalmatianswas adapted into a 1961animated filmand a 1996live-action film,both produced byDisney.Her novelI Capture the Castlewas voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of theBBC'sThe Big Read(2003), and was adapted into afilmreleased the same year.[1][2]

Dodie Smith
Smith in the 1930s
Smith in the 1930s
BornDorothy Gladys Smith
(1896-05-03)3 May 1896
Whitefield,Lancashire,England
Died24 November 1990(1990-11-24)(aged 94)
Uttlesford,Essex,England
Pen nameC. L. Anthony
Charles Henry Percy
OccupationNovelist, playwright
NationalityBritish
EducationSt Paul's Girls' School
GenreChildren's literature
Notable worksThe Hundred and One Dalmatians;I Capture the Castle;The Starlight Barking
Spouse
Alec Macbeth Beesley
​
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(m.1939; died 1987)​

Biography

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Early life

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Smith was born on 3 May 1896 in a house named Stoneycroft (number 118) on Bury New Road,Whitefield,nearBuryinLancashire,England. She was an only child. Her parents were Ernest and Ella Smith (née Furber). Ernest was a bank manager; he died in 1898 when Dodie was two years old. Dodie and her mother moved toOld Traffordto live with her grandparents, William and Margaret Furber.[3]Dodie's childhood home, Kingston House,[4]was at 609 Stretford Road,[5]and faced theManchester Ship Canal.[1]She lived with her mother, maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles.[4]

In Smith's autobiographyLook Back with Love(1974), she credits her grandfather William as one of three reasons she became a playwright. He was an avid theatregoer, and they had long talks aboutShakespeareandmelodrama.The second reason was that her uncle Harold Furber, an amateur actor, read plays with her and introduced her to contemporary drama. Thirdly, her mother had wanted to be an actress, an ambition frustrated except for walk-on parts, once in the company ofSarah Bernhardt.Smith wrote her first play at the age of ten, and she began acting in minor roles during her teens at the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society.[3]There is ablue plaquecommemorating the building where Dorothy grew up.[5]The formative years of Dorothy's childhood were spent at this house.

Move to London

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18 Dorset Square, London
Blue plaque, 18 Dorset Square

In 1910 Ella remarried and moved to London with her new husband and the 14-year-old Dodie, who attended school both inManchesterand atSt Paul's Girls' School,London. In 1914 Dodie entered theRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art(RADA). Her first role came inArthur Wing Pinero's playPlaygoers.Other roles after RADA included a Chinese girl inMr. Wu,a parlour maid inYe Gods,and a young mother inNiobe,which was directed byBasil Dean,who would later buy her playAutumn Crocus.

She was also in thePortsmouthRepertory Theatre, travelled with aYMCAcompany to entertain troops in France during World War I, toured with the French comedyFrench Leave,and appeared as Anne inGalsworthy's playThe Pigeonat theEveryman Theatreand at a festival inZürich,Switzerland.[3]While Ella was dying ofbreast cancer,she and Dodie became devotees ofChristian Science.[6]

Career after acting

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Even though Smith had sold a movie script,Schoolgirl Rebels,using the pseudonym Charles Henry Percy,[1]and written a one-act play,British Talent,that premiered at the Three Arts Club in 1924, she still had a hard time finding steady work.[3]In 1923, she accepted a job inHeal and Son's furniture store in London and became the toy buyer (and mistress of the chairman,Ambrose Heal).[7]She wrote her first staged play,Autumn Crocus,in 1931 using the pseudonym C.L. Anthony. Its success, and the discovery of her identity by journalists, inspired the newspaper headline, "Shopgirl Writes Play".[8]The show starredFay ComptonandFrancis Lederer.[3]

Smith's fourth playCall It a Daywas acted by theTheatre Guildon 28 January 1936 and ran for 194 performances. It ran in London for 509 performances, the longest run of any of Smith's plays to date. American criticJoseph Wood Krutchcompared it favorably toGeorge S. KaufmanandEdna Ferber's playDinner at EightandEdward Knoblock'sGrand Hotel.He said the London production "stays pretty consistently on the level of comedy and imposes upon its brittle structure no greater emotional weight than that structure is capable of bearing."[3]

The success ofCall It a Dayenabled Smith to purchase The Barretts, a cottage near the village ofFinchingfield,Essex.Her next play,Bonnet Over the Windmill(1937), was not as successful. It concerns three aspiring young actresses and their landlady, a middle-aged former music-hall performer, and the young women's attempts to attract the attention of a playwright and a theatre producer with hopes of obtaining dramatic roles.[3]

Her next play,Dear Octopus(1938), featured DameMarie TempestandSir John Gielgud.The unusual title refers to a toast in the play: "To the family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to."Brooks Atkinsontermed Smith a "domestic panoramatist" and compared her to many English novelists, fromSamuel RichardsontoArchibald Marshall;he also described her as the "appointed recorder" of the English family. The production in London ran for 376 performances, compared to that inNew Yorkof only 53.

When Smith travelled to America to castDear Octopus,she brought with her Alec Macbeth Beesley (son ofTitanicsurvivorLawrence Beesley[9]), who had also worked at Heal's and had become her longtime friend and business manager. The two married in 1939. She would not have another play staged in London until 1952, thoughLovers and Friendsdid play at thePlymouth Theatrein 1943. The show featuredKatharine CornellandRaymond Massey.[3]

Smith lived for many years in Dorset Square,Marylebone,London, which ablue plaquenow commemorates; her date of birth is shown inaccurately as 1895 instead of 1896.[10]

Later life

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During the 1940s Smith and Beesley relocated to the United States to avoid difficulties due to his being aconscientious objector.[8]She felt homesick for Britain, which inspired her first novel, written inDoylestown, Pennsylvania,namedI Capture the Castle(1948). She and Beesley also spent time inBeverly Hills,Malibu,andWilton, Connecticut.[3]

During their American interlude, the couple became friends with writersChristopher Isherwood,Charles BrackettandJohn Van Druten.In her memoirs Smith credits Beesley with suggesting to Van Druten that he adapt Isherwood'sSally BowlesstoryGoodbye to Berlininto a play (the Van Druten play,I Am a Camera,later became the musicalCabaret). In her memoirs, Smith acknowledges having received writing advice from her friend, the novelistA. J. Cronin.

Smith's first play back in London,Letter from Paris,was an adaptation ofHenry James's short novelThe Reverberator.She used the adapting style ofWilliam Archibald's playThe Innocents(adapted fromThe Turn of the Screw) and Ruth and Augustus Goetz's playThe Heiress(adapted fromWashington Square).[3]

In the 1970s she lived inStambourne,Essex.

Death

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Smith died in 1990 (three years after Beesley) inUttlesford,northEssex,England. She was cremated and her ashes scattered to the wind. She had namedJulian Barnesas her literary executor, a job she thought would not involve much work. Barnes writes of the complicated task in his essay "Literary Executions", revealing among other things how he secured the return of the film rights toI Capture the Castle,which had been owned by Disney since 1949.[11]Smith's personal papers are housed inBoston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and include manuscripts, photographs, artwork and correspondence (including letters fromChristopher IsherwoodandJohn Gielgud).

The Hundred and One Dalmatians

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Smith and Beesley loved dogs and keptDalmatiansas pets; at one point the couple had nine of them. The first was namedPongo,which became the name Smith used for the canine protagonist of herThe Hundred and One Dalmatiansnovel. Smith had the idea for the novel when one of her friends observed a group of her Dalmatians and said "Those dogs would make a lovely fur coat".[12][13]

The novel has been adapted byDisneytwice, an animated film in 1961 calledOne Hundred and One Dalmatiansand a live-action film in 1996 called101 Dalmatians.Although both of the Disney films spawned a sequel film,101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventureand102 Dalmatians,neither sequel has any connection to Smith's own sequel,The Starlight Barking.

Works

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Film adaptations

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Film sequelsunconnected with Smith's ownThe Starlight Barking.

References

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  1. ^abcHile 2004
  2. ^"What Dodie Smith did first: the story behind Dear Octopus".The Times.
  3. ^abcdefghijHadsel 1982
  4. ^abGrove 2004
  5. ^abScheerhout, John (12 September 2002),"Honour for 'Dalmatians' Dodie",Manchester Evening News,retrieved14 January2010
  6. ^Smith 1974
  7. ^Alan Crawford,"Heal, Sir Ambrose (1872–1959)"Archived27 October 2015 at theWayback Machine,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 12 August 2007
  8. ^abSmith 1979
  9. ^Grove, Valerie (1996).Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith.London: Chatto & Windus. p. 67.ISBN978-0-7011-5753-1.
  10. ^"Blue Plaque".Archived fromthe originalon 11 February 2017.Retrieved9 February2017.
  11. ^Barnes 2003
  12. ^Smith, Dodie (2018).The Hundred and One Dalmatians & The Starlight Barking – Modern Classics.About The Author: Egmont UK Ltd.ISBN978-1405288750.
  13. ^"10 Things You Didn't Know About 101 Dalmatians".Oh My Disney."2. The story is based on Dodie Smith's own experience". c. 2015.Retrieved7 December2019.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: location (link)

Sources

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Further reading

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