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Feature Story |
Shopgirl Writes Play
By Dawn Fuller, Assistant Reader Services Manager |
Like an old Nat King Cole album in the back of my closet, or a five-dollar bill discovered the next time I slid into my green pea coat, or an elementary school love note
requiring you to check "yes" or "no," I recently rediscovered a treasure by author Dodie Smith.
Dorothy Gladys Smith, C.L. Anthony, better known as Dodie Smith, may have said that "noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression," but I would
add an under-the-covers late-night read of my torn and dusty copy of I Capture the Castle (RC 47004) to that list.
Just before her death in 1990, Dodie Smith led her appointed literary executor, friend and fellow author Julian Barnes, to remark,
"She said she didn't think I'd have much to do as her literary executor." She couldn't have been more wrong! Most well known for her adored
The Hundred and One Dalmatians, her 1948 novel I Capture the Castle (RC 47004) was reprinted in 1998 and has garnered a following beyond her wildest dreams.
Smith was born in Lancashire, England, in 1896, to Ernest and Ella Smith. Two short years after her birth, Ernest succumbed to cancer. Ella then moved with her young daughter
back to her home town of Manchester. Smith was quoted as saying, "The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts ever quite wish to."
At the tender age of four, Dodie's love affair with the theatre commenced when playing the parts of boys to small audiences, having been inspired by the local success of her uncle Harold,
president of Athenaeum, the Manchester drama club. She later attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and of her acting career remarked, "I was too short and not attractive enough."
Smith became a toy buyer in Heals of London, where she met and fell in love with her future husband, Alec Beesley, and broke off her sordid shenanigans with Heals'
married chairman, Ambrose Heal. The first few years of her life with Alec before marriage were spent sneaking off for long languid weekends to country cottages,
but maintaining separate London flats. After having been married to Alec for many years, she attributed the success of her relationship to "separate bedrooms."
Following the tradition of the times to take on a male pen name, in 1931 "C.L. Anthony" wrote her first highly successful play,
Autumn Crocus, which earned her the "Shopgirl Writes Play" headline. Smith continued in this vein, writing the hit plays Service, Touch Wood, Call It a Day,
Bonnet Over the Windmill, Dear Octopus, Lovers and Friends and Letter from Paris.
Smith and Beesley, a conscientious objector during World War II, moved to America where she began writing for Paramount Studios. It was during this time period that she formed
lasting friendships with writers Christopher Isherwood, Charles Brackett and John Van Druten. In 1948, her longing for England led her to write I Capture the Castle (RC 47004).
The narrator of the story, 17-year-old Cassandra, invites the reader to her home in a dilapidated moldy English castle through her personal diaries and even shares
"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." The madcap adventures of her exceptionally eccentric family are regaled in glorious detail through her teenage eyes.
I Capture the Castle (RC 47004) was made into a film in 2003, and has garnered a tremendous following since its reprinting.
Smith and Beesley made it back to their beloved England, where she wrote her best-known novel in 1956, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. This children's classic was made
into both a Disney animated film and a live-action film. Beesley and Smith raised a total of nine Dalmatians, and the idea for the novel came about when a dear friend commented to her on
how "they would make a nice fur coat." It is interesting to note that the main character in the tale, Pongo, was the name of their most beloved pet. She followed the book with a
sequel titled The Starlight Barking.
At the age of 90, Smith left not only a timeless, charming body of well-written work, but the idea that no matter how quirky, weird and wonderful they might be, our pets, family and love for
one another make the ride worthwhile.
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