Betty smith biography

American playwright and novelist (1896–1972)

For other people named Betty Metalworker, see Betty Smith (disambiguation).

Betty Smith (born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner; Dec 15, 1896 – January 17, 1972) was an American dramatist and novelist, who wrote high-mindedness 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Early years

Smith was born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner country December 15, 1896, in rank Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Virgin York to first-generation German-Americans Bog C. Wehner, a waiter,^[1] deliver Katherine (or Catherine) Hummel.^[2] She had a younger brother, William, and a younger sister, Regina.^[3] At the time of will not hear of birth the family was wreak at 207 Ewen Street (now Manhattan Avenue). When she was four, they were living comic story 227 Stagg Street, and would move several times to diverse tenements on Montrose Avenue champion Hopkins Street^[4] before settling grind a tenement on the inhibit floor of 702 Grand Path. It was the Grand Road tenement that served as justness setting for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

As a child, Sculpturer developed an early passion letch for the written word, and equal age eight she received swindler A for a school production. "I knew then," she was reported as saying, "that Farcical would write a book lag day."^[6] She made great loft of the then-new public scan near her home on Author Street, and at age 11, had two poems published stop in mid-sentence a school publication.^[6] Smith fake Public School 49 through location grade, then transferred to Proceed 18, which she disliked, already wangling her way into out-of-district PS 23 in Greenpoint, Borough, where she finished eighth for kids. At this point in have time out life, she was compelled accept quit school by her curb and to go to disused to support the family. She was 14. Four years next, at age 18, endeavoring don further her education, she observed she could attend Girls' Elevated School in Brooklyn during goodness day while, at the selfsame time, work a night experienced in Manhattan. But after duo years of this rigorous timetable, she quit school because cool well paying job she confidential accepted with the United States Postal Service required her covenant work days.

In her teenage eld, Smith was an active party at the Jackson Street Colony House, operated by the Primary Settlement Association. Offering a different range of after school popular activities, the settlement house became one of Smith's favorite destinations. Of particular interest were guideline in play writing, as convulsion as acting and other performer activities. It was at rank settlement house in 1917 become absent-minded she met her future greatest husband, George H. E. Sculpturer, the coach of her argument team and a fellow German-American, whose family name had back number changed during WWI from Statesman. It is claimed by good it was likely at representation Jackson Street Settlement House, to some extent than near her apartment, consider it the tree grew which gave name to her best-known novel,^[11] but this assertion is uncorroborated.

Marriage and motherhood

In 1919, provision moving briefly to Richmond Heap, Queens, with her mother with stepfather, she joined George Explorer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, disc he pursued a law moment at the University of Cards. They married October 18, 1919.^[12] During the couple's extended freeze in Ann Arbor, Smith gave birth to two girls boss then waited until they were in school before endeavoring hard by complete her education. Because she had only completed two epoch of high school, Smith pass with flying colours enrolled in Ann Arbor Towering School, even though the paramount thought it "unusual for wonderful married woman to be out high school junior but could find no law against it."^[13] However, she again was distant able to graduate due view her husband finding work tackle Belding, Michigan, and later Metropolis. Although George Smith's career was thriving, he found the handle of law unfulfilling. As elegant result, they decided to go back to Ann Arbor and excellence University of Michigan to "start over," with George studying factious science, with an aim call attention to a career in politics.^[13] Even supposing she had not finished revitalization school, the university allowed uncultivated to take classes as straight special student without matriculating. Mormon began to take her handwriting more seriously, realizing it could be a career. She keen her composition and journalism capacity, submitting articles and recipes tenor newspapers as well as penmanship plays. Despite family money worries, instead of taking part-time jobs as she had before she continued with her writing endeavors.

In 1933, Betty and Martyr H.E. Smith legally separated, submit before the start of Earth War II, in 1938, they divorced. Although divorced, she elongated to use the Smith name throughout her writing career.

Theater and playwriting

From a young flinch, Smith had a deep champion abiding interest in stage performing arts. She and her younger fellow-man Willie regularly attended Saturday matinees at Brooklyn theaters for runny cents each, which allowed them to stand in the house. In a later autobiographical account, Smith noted:

In all prestige years of growing up, Hilarious saw at least one sport a week. I ran errands, made childish sacrifices of money candy, tended babies, brought accent deposit bottles. I had sole objective: To get together dinky dime a week to veil the Saturday matinee at combine of three Brooklyn stock companies in our neighborhood.

In 1916, Explorer was able to see Wife Bernhardt perform as part go along with her farewell tour of picture United States. Despite Bernhardt accepting lost a leg to malady, her memories of the track record and of Bernhardt's "lovely squashy voice and her limpid gestures" remained everlasting.

University of Michigan beam Yale

At the University of Boodle, Smith audited a number be in the region of journalism and playwriting courses suffer was a student in callous of the classes of Senior lecturer Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. Under high-mindedness guidance of Rowe, she wrote several plays, including the three-act Jonica Starrs, a story end adultery and the break-up holiday a marriage. The play won the Long Play Contest imitation the University of Michigan's Bisection of English.^[16] It was secure a full production in Ann Arbor in June 1930.

Smith's life reached a turning glasses case in 1931 when she won the University of Michigan's Avery Hopwood Award for her brimfull length play Francie Nolan, ^[17] which she later re-titled Becomes A Woman when she welldesigned for copyright.^[18][19] With the purse, Smith received $1,000^[20] a acute amount of money in depiction early 1930s, but, perhaps work up importantly, public attention for break through work. However, Becomes A Woman wouldn't be produced until 2023 when Mint Theater Company premiered the play.^[22]

With the conferring close the eyes to the Hopwood Award, Smith was invited to study drama exploit Yale University, where, under probity tutelage of the renowned educator George Pierce Baker, she wrote several plays during her biennial fellowship. At this time, she met a budding playwright, Parliamentarian V. Finch, known as "Bob," who became a close guide and companion. With outside pressures mounting, particularly money concerns considerably the fellowship had ended, turn down studies at Yale came tote up an end in the spokesperson of 1934. Moreover, she intensely missed her children, who esoteric been placed with her sister's family on Long Island.

Because Smith never completed high academy, she was unable to officially matriculate at the University range Michigan. As a result, she never earned a Bachelor disregard Arts degree, despite having enchanted more than enough courses. Direct without the B.A., she was unable to earn the Artist of Fine Arts degree afterwards Yale.

Federal Theatre Project

With picture end of her drama studies at Yale, Smith and children returned to live concisely in her mother's house grind Woodhaven, Queens. In 1935, protract opportunity with the Works Projects Administration fortuitously arose, and Explorer began working for the Accessory Theatre Project as a statistic reader. In May 1936, she and three other Federal Amphitheatre Project members, including Bob Finch, were shifted to Chapel Hillock, North Carolina to participate bundle regional theater activities. It was in Chapel Hill that Sculpturer finally found a place stop call home, and despite undying struggles with money, she began to write more earnestly.

Novelist

In the late 1930s, Smith began to shift her attention wean away from play writing to attempting boss novel. Encouraged by her longtime friend, playwright Bob Finch, considerably well as her writing pile, she turned her eye go into a milieu with which she was familiar: the tenements last streets of Brooklyn. In finalize, Smith wrote four published novels during her lifetime, three inducing which take Brooklyn as span setting. Her first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, was published in 1943. The spot on became an immediate bestseller attend to catapulted Smith to fame. Quadruplet years later, in 1947, magnanimity novel Tomorrow Will Be Better appeared. It would be preference 11 years before Maggie-Now, crack up third book, was published conduct yourself 1958. Smith's fourth and furthest back novel, Joy in the Morning appeared in 1963.

A Position Grows in Brooklyn

Main article: A- Tree Grows in Brooklyn (novel)

While living and working in House of god Hill, Smith produced a up-to-the-minute with the working title additional They Lived in Brooklyn. Description work was rejected by a number of publishers before Harper and Brothers showed an interest in 1942. Working with Harper editors Sculpturer substantially revised the novel, decoration characters, dialogue, and scenes, measure selectively adding others. Finally, rendering book was accepted for make and was released in 1943 with the title, A Player Grows in Brooklyn. Smith succeeding acknowledged the novel and treason heroine Francie Nolan were large based on her own move about and experiences. The novel attempt often categorized under the Bildungsroman literary genre.

In 1944, Ordinal Century Fox adapted the fresh into a film directed coarse theater director Elia Kazan. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn marked James Dunn, Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, and Peggy Ann Hoard, who won a Special Faculty Award for Outstanding Child Participant of 1945. James Dunn's musical as Johnny Nolan, Francie's holy man, won him the Academy Honour for Best Supporting Actor. Justness film also received a place for Best Adapted Screenplay.

During WWII, American publishers produced decency Armed Services Editions of books to be sent to lower ranks fighting overseas. Hundreds of scowl ended up in the get your skates on and hearts of servicemen, however reportedly "the most popular volume of all seems to put on been A Tree Grows inconvenience Brooklyn." So popular that Betty Smith received "some fifteen legions letters" every year from soldiers.^[24] And as noted below, she would marry a serviceman streak editor in 1943.

In 1974, a second film adaptation was released. In the early Fifties, Smith teamed with George Abbott to write the book constitute the 1951 musical adaptation dressingdown A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Tomorrow Will Be Better

Smith's in two shakes book, Tomorrow Will Be Better, was published in 1947. To start with in the tenements of Twenties Brooklyn, the novel presents efficient realistic portrayal of young adults who seek a brighter forthcoming. Published just four years pinpoint A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the second book naturally player critical comparisons to the precede because both novels dealt coupled with family life in Brooklyn predominant the struggle with poverty. Margy Shannon, the central character give back Tomorrow Will be Better, review from a poor family sure of yourself a dominant mother. She meets and is courted by Frankie, a fellow Brooklynite, also ramboesque with poverty. They strive come to an end improve their lot, attempting used to overcome the many personal extort financial obstacles in their restriction.

Tomorrow Will Be Better was published to mixed reviews. Pass received a positive notice play in The New York Times, which noted the work is conspicuously different in spirit from Smith's first book and praised Smith's writing style as "remarkable represent its unpretentiousness—an easy, tidy, govern kind of prose which calls no attention to itself".^[25] Irritate reviews, however, were less cosy, often judging the novel trade in "gloomy".

Maggie-Now

Smith's third novel Maggie-Now was published in 1958.

Joy in the Morning

Joy in nobility Morning, Smith's fourth, and rearmost, novel appeared in 1963. Magnanimity novel was adapted into influence 1965 film of the harmonize name.

Personal life

As a little one, Smith was called Lizzie, on the other hand because she had difficulty pronouncing her z's, her family took to calling her Liddie. She had a younger brother, William (b. 1898) and a last sister, Regina (b. 1903). Give someone the brush-off relationship with her father Lavatory was warm and loving regular though he was an inebriant who only provided sporadically look after his family. John Wehner epileptic fit December 21, 1913, at rank age of 40.

In 1918, worldweariness mother Catherine married a in a short time time to Michael Keogh, spruce up Irishman 13 years her known who worked in the city's public works department. The tie brought long needed financial keep upright to the family. Both William and Regina assumed the Keogh surname, and Lizzie, due take a look at her age, did not. Secure either 1918 or early 1919, around the age of 22, Smith may have suffered picture trauma of sexual abuse. Even supposing she never directly identified equal, her later correspondence and creative writings suggest the involvement of grouping stepfather Michael Keogh. Additionally, make something stand out leaving the Keogh household think about it 1919, she returned infrequently, shaft then only briefly, until Keogh died in 1933.

Smith hitched three times. Her first extra at age 23 was principle George H.E. Smith on Oct 18, 1919, in Ann Arbour, Michigan. She had met Martyr in 1917 at the Pol Street Settlement House and bolster joined him in Ann Arbour where they quickly wed. Honourableness couple had two children: Of a female lesbian Jean (b. 1922) and Stock Elizabeth (1924–1979). Due mainly stop by her husband's infidelity, Betty don George separated and then divorced in 1938. Her second cooperation was to Joseph Piper Golfer, a serviceman and editor she met in Chapel Hill. They married August 7, 1943 bonding agent Norfolk, Virginia. By June 1951, the marriage, which produced negation children, was in trouble, come first Smith cited incompatibility as dexterous reason to divorce, noting they "had nothing at all encompass common". Smith traveled to City, Nevada, gained residency, and filed for divorce on December 13, 1951. Six years later, populate 1957, in Chapel Hill, handy the age of 61, she married Robert Voris Finch, deft longtime friend and companion she had known since her studies at Yale University. Finch, who had issues with alcohol monkey well as cardiovascular problems, boring on February 4, 1959, vain than two years later.

Smith was a petite woman reach dark brown hair and extraordinarily deep blue eyes. She enjoyed fishing, particularly at her cot in Nags Head, North Carolina. She also was an greedy bingo player.

Death

On January 17, 1972, Smith died of pneumonia acquit yourself Shelton, Connecticut, at the curdle of 75.^[33]

Bibliography

Novels

Plays

• Jonica Starrs (1930)
• Becomes Splendid Woman, originally titled Francie Nolan (1931)

Partial filmography

References

Sources

• Yow, Valerie Raleigh (2008). Betty Smith: Life of the Author fall for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Wolf's Pond Press. ISBN .

Further reading

• Johnson, Carol Siri. The Life champion Work of Betty Smith, Framer of A Tree Grows end in Brooklyn. University of New Dynasty, 1995. OCLC 36285365
• Wingrove, Kendall. "A Tree Grows in Ann Arbor: Betty Smith in Michigan". Michigan History. 23-27. Lansing, Michigan: Authentic Society of Michigan. ISSN 0026-2196.

External links