Dodie Smith
Dodie Smith | |
---|---|
Born | Dorothy Gladys Smith 3 May 1896 Whitefield, Lancashire, England |
Died | 24 November 1990 Uttlesford, Essex, England | (aged 94)
Pen name | C. L. Anthony Charles Henry Percy |
Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
Nationality | British |
Education | St Paul's Girls' School |
Genre | Children's literature |
Notable works | The Hundred and One Dalmatians; I Capture the Castle; The Starlight Barking |
Spouse | Alec Macbeth Beesley (1939–1987) |
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith (3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 film. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).[1][2]
Biography
Early life
Smith was born on 3 May 1896 in a house named Stoneycroft (number 118) on Bury New Road,
In Smith's autobiography Look 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 about
Move to London
In 1910 Ella remarried and moved to London with her new husband and the 14-year-old Dodie, who attended school both in
She was also in the Portsmouth Repertory Theatre, travelled with a YMCA company to entertain troops in France during World War I, toured with the French comedy French Leave, and appeared as Anne in Galsworthy's play The Pigeon at the Everyman Theatre and at a festival in Zürich, Switzerland.[3] While Ella was dying of breast cancer, she and Dodie became devotees of Christian Science.[6]
Career after acting
Even though Smith had sold a movie script, Schoolgirl Rebels, using the pseudonym Charles Henry Percy,
Smith's fourth play Call It a Day was acted by the Theatre Guild on 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 critic Joseph Wood Krutch compared it favorably to George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's play Dinner at Eight and Edward Knoblock's Grand 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 of Call It a Day enabled Smith to purchase The Barretts, a cottage near the village of Finchingfield, 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,
When Smith travelled to America to cast Dear Octopus, she brought with her Alec Macbeth Beesley (son of
Smith lived for many years in Dorset Square, Marylebone, London, where a blue plaque now commemorates her occupation; her date of birth is shown inaccurately as 1895 instead of 1896.[10]
Later life
During the 1940s Smith and Beesley relocated to the United States to avoid difficulties due to his being a
During their American interlude, the couple became friends with writers Christopher Isherwood, Charles Brackett and John Van Druten. In her memoirs Smith credits Beesley with suggesting to Van Druten that he adapt Isherwood's Sally Bowles story Goodbye to Berlin into a play (the Van Druten play, I Am a Camera, later became the musical Cabaret). In her memoirs, Smith acknowledges having received writing advice from her friend, the novelist A. J. Cronin.
Smith's first play back in London, Letter from Paris, was an adaptation of Henry James's short novel The Reverberator. She used the adapting style of William Archibald's play The Innocents (adapted from The Turn of the Screw) and Ruth and Augustus Goetz's play The Heiress (adapted from Washington Square).[3]
In the 1970s she lived in Stambourne, Essex.
Death
Smith died in 1990 (three years after Beesley) in Uttlesford, north Essex, England. She was cremated and her ashes scattered to the wind. She had named Julian Barnes as her literary executor, a job she thought would not be 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 to I Capture the Castle, which had been owned by Disney since 1949.[11] Smith's personal papers are housed in Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and include manuscripts, photographs, artwork and correspondence (including letters from Christopher Isherwood and John Gielgud).
The Hundred and One Dalmatians
Smith and Beesley loved dogs and kept
The novel has been adapted by Disney twice, an animated film in 1961 called One Hundred and One Dalmatians and a live-action film in 1996 called 101 Dalmatians. Although both of the Disney films spawned a sequel film, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure and 102 Dalmatians, neither sequel has any connection to Smith's own sequel, The Starlight Barking.
Works
Autobiography
Novels
|
Plays
Screenplays
|
Film adaptations
- Looking Forward (1933) based on Service
- Autumn Crocus (1934)
- Call It a Day (1937)
- Dear Octopus (1943)
- The First Day of Spring (1956), based on Call It a Day
- One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
- 101 Dalmatians (1996)
- I Capture the Castle (2003)
Film sequels unconnected with Smith's own The Starlight Barking.
- 102 Dalmatians (2000)
- 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure (2003)
- Cruella (2021)
References
- ^ a b c Hile 2004
- ^ "What Dodie Smith did first: the story behind Dear Octopus". The Times.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hadsel 1982
- ^ a b Grove 2004
- ^ a b Scheerhout, John (12 September 2002), "Honour for 'Dalmatians' Dodie", Manchester Evening News, retrieved 14 January 2010
- ^ Smith 1974
- ^ Alan Crawford, "Heal, Sir Ambrose (1872–1959)" Archived 27 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 12 August 2007
- ^ a b Smith 1979
- ISBN 978-0-7011-5753-1.
- ^ "Blue Plaque". Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
- ^ Barnes 2003
- ISBN 978-1405288750.
- ^ "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. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
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Sources
- Barnes, Julian (2003), "Literary Executions", in Arana, Marie (ed.), The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work : A Collection from the Washington Post Book World, New York: PublicAffairs
- Grove, Valerie (2004), "Smith (married name Beesley), Dorothy Gladys (Dodie) (1896–1990)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, retrieved 14 January 2010
- Hadsel, Martha (1982), Modern British Dramatists, 1900–1945, Detroit: Gale, ISBN 978-0-8103-0937-1
- Hile, Kevin S. (2004), Contemporary Authors Online, Detroit: Gale, ISBN 978-0-7876-3995-2
- Smith, Dodie (1974), Look Back With Love: A Manchester Childhood, London: Heinemann, ISBN 0-434-71355-4
- Smith, Dodie (1979), Look Back With Astonishment, London: W.H. Allen, ISBN 0-491-02198-4
Further reading
- Grove, Valerie (1996). Dear Dodie: the life of Dodie Smith. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-5753-4.
- Hadsel, Martha (1982). Modern British Dramatists, 1900–1945. Detroit: Gale. ISBN 978-0-8103-0937-1.
- Hile, Kevin S. (2004). Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale. ISBN 978-0-7876-3995-2.
- Smith, Dodie (1985). Look Back With Gratitude. London: Muller, Blond & White. ISBN 0-584-11124-X.
- Smith, Dodie (1978). Look Back With Mixed Feelings. London: W.H. Allen. ISBN 0-491-02073-2.
External links
- Library resources in your library and in other libraries about Dodie Smith
- Library resources in your library and in other libraries by Dodie Smith
- The Dodie Smith Information Site (archived 2006-04-30)
- Dodie Smith at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Dodie Smith at Library of Congress, with 69 library catalogue records