Smith, Betty (1896–1972)

American novelist and playwright. Born Elisabeth Keogh on December 15, 1896 (one source cites 1904), in Brooklyn, New York; died on January 17, 1972; daughter of John Keogh and Catherine (Wehner) Keogh; attended the University of Michigan, 1927–30; attended Yale University Drama School, 1930–34; married George H.E. Smith, in June 1924 (divorced 1938); married Joseph Piper Jones (a journalist), in 1943 (divorced 1951); married Robert Finch, in June 1957 (died 1959); children: (first marriage) Nancy, Mary.

Selected writings:

(novels) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Tomorrow Will Be Better (1948), Maggie-Now (1958), Joy in the Morning (1963); (plays) Folk Stuff (1935), His Last Skirmish (1937), Naked Angel (1937), Popecastle Inn (1937), Saints Get Together (1937), Trees of His Father (1937), Vine Leaves (1937), The Professor Roars (1938), Western Night (1938), Darkness at the Window (1938), Murder in the Snow (1938), Silvered Rope (1938), Youth Takes Over; or, When A Man's Sixteen (1939), Lawyer Lincoln (1939), Mannequins' Maid (1939), They Released Barabbas (1939), A Night in the Country (1939), Near Closing Time (1939), Package for Ponsonby (1939), Western Ghost Town (1939), Bayou Harlequinade (1940), Fun After Supper (1940), Heroes Just Happen (1940), Room for a King (1940), Summer Comes to the Diamond O (1940), To Jenny With Love (1941), Boy Abe (1944), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (musical, with George Abbott, 1951), Durham Station (1961).

When A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published in 1943, critics of the day readily assumed that the story of a young girl growing up in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s was

largely an autobiographical account of first-time novelist Betty Smith's own childhood. Smith herself was born Elisabeth Keogh on December 15, 1896, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. After leaving school at the age of 14 with only an eighth-grade education, she worked first in a factory and in retail before moving on to clerical jobs in New York City. She married George Smith in 1924, had two daughters, and moved to the Midwest, where her husband attended law school at the University of Michigan. They divorced in 1938.

When her daughters were old enough to go to school during the day, Smith enrolled at the University of Michigan as a "special student" and took courses in writing. She eventually wrote articles for the Detroit Free Press and the NEA syndicate. When Smith's one-act plays won her the University of Michigan's prestigious Avery Hopwood Award, she decided to focus her attention on playwriting and enrolled at the Yale University School of Drama. At Yale, Smith earned the Rockefeller Fellowship in Playwriting and the Rockefeller Dramatists' Guild Playwriting Fellowship. During the 1930s and early 1940s, she wrote over 70 one-act plays (all of them either produced or published), and was involved in the theater in a variety of ways, including acting in a few plays, working as a playreader, and a brief stint as a radio performer. By this time, she had made her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Although she was a seasoned playwright for nearly a decade, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was Smith's first novel. The book was an instant success with critics and readers alike. Smith commented, "One night … I, an obscure writer living quietly and on modest means in a small Southern town, went to bed as usual. I woke up the next morning to be informed that I had become a celebrity." The nostalgic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was noted for both its heart-warming tone and its grimly realistic nature. Smith's young heroine, Francie Nolan, became a national figure. Two years after it was published, Elia Kazan directed a hugely popular movie version of the book for 20th Century-Fox, starring Dorothy McGuire , Joan Blondell , and Peggy Ann Garner as Francie, that won Garner a special Academy Award and has since gone on to become a classic. Smith had tried to sell the book to Hollywood studios for $5,000 before its publication, but was refused. Its exceptional popularity quickly changed producers' minds and led to offers up to $50,000. Smith held out for $55,000. Despite the similarities between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn's fictional Francie Nolan and Smith's Brooklyn upbringing, Smith claimed that her own childhood had not been nearly as grim as Francie's and that she held no bitter memories. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn had sold some six million copies by the early 1970s, was translated into 16 languages, and was required reading for millions of American schoolchildren.

Smith's next two novels, Tomorrow Will Be Better (1948) and Maggie-Now (1958), were also set in Brooklyn, but achieved far less success. Still, Maggie-Now won the Sir Walter Raleigh award for fiction in 1958. Her last novel, the autobiographical Joy in the Morning (1963), was set in Michigan; she had lost her connection to Brooklyn, she admitted, and could no longer honestly set a story there. A member of the Authors League and the Dramatists Guild, Smith served as a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1945–46, and continued writing plays. In 1951, she collaborated with George Abbott on a musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She died in 1972.

sources:

Block, Maxine, ed. Current Biography 1943. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1943.

Commire, Anne, ed. Something About the Author. Vol. 6. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1974.

Gunton, Sharon, ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 19. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1981.

Kimberly A. Burton , B.A., M.I.S., Ann Arbor, Michigan