Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith (3 May 1896 –
24 November 1990) was an English novelist and
playwright. Smith is best known for her novel
The Hundred and One Dalmatians featuring Cruella
de Vil. Her other works include I Capture the
Castle and The Starlight Barking.
Dorothy was born on 3 May 1896 in Whitefield, near
Bury in Lancashire. An only child, her parents
were Ernest and Ella Smith (née Furber). Ernest
was a bank manager; he died in 1898, when
Dorothy was two years old. Dodie and her mother
moved to Old Trafford to live with her
grandparents. Dorothy's childhood home, known as
Kingston House, was at 609 Stretford Road. where
she lived with her mother, maternal
grandparents, two aunts, and three uncles.[1]
Today there is a blue plaque on the building,
commemorating where Dorothy grew up. The
formative years of Dorothy's childhood were
spent at this house. But in 1910 Ella remarried
and relocated with her new husband and the 14
year old Dodie to London. In 1914, Dodie entered
the Academy (later Royal Academy) of Dramatic
Art, and Ella died of breast cancer. During
Ella's illness, mother and daughter became
followers of Christian Science.
Dodie unsuccessfully pursued a career as an
actress. In 1923, she took a job in Heals
furniture store in London and became the toy
buyer (and a mistress of the chairman, Ambrose
Heal).[4] She authored her first play, Autumn
Crocus, in 1931 under the pseudonym C.L.
Anthony. Its success, and the discovery of her
identity by journalists, inspired the newspaper
headline, "Shopgirl Writes Play".
She spent most of her years as a writer
living in a townhouse in London, where a plaque
now commemorates her occupation. In 1939, she
married Alec Beesley, another employee at Heal's.
During the 1940s, she and her husband moved
to the United States due to legal difficulties
with Beesley's stand as a conscientious
objector. While living in the U.S. and feeling
homesick for England, she wrote her first novel,
I Capture the Castle (1948). During the American
interlude, the Beesleys became friends with
writers Christopher Isherwood, Charles Brackett,
and John Van Druten. In Smith's memoirs, she
credits Alec with making the suggestion 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 is best known for her novel The Hundred
and One Dalmatians (1956) (which was adapted
into the Disney animated film One Hundred and
One Dalmatians). Her novel I Capture the Castle
also has a devoted following (a film version was
released in 2003).
Smith died in 1990 after naming Julian Barnes
as her literary executor, a job she felt would
not be much work. She was cremated. Her ashes
were scattered in the wind. 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 held by
Disney since 1949[6] 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).
