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All Dreams Come True 1951-1957

Musical on Broadway

Smith had two major dreams in her life: one was marrying Finch, and the other was having a show on Broadway. Even if she couldn't reach the alcoholic Finch, she was in a position to have her second dream come true. This was made possible through the agency of Helen Strauss, the head of the literary section at William Morris. Strauss was seeped in the world of big men in the media -- she knew everyone, everywhere, on Broadway, in Hollywood and in the Publishing industry. Consequently, when a young Broadway producer, Robert Freyer, came to William Morris looking for a story to make into a show with his mentor George Abbott, Strauss, Morris and Freyer sat down together and went over Strauss' list of literary talents. She had just signed up Smith the week before. Freyer picked A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from the list, and the show began.

Strauss called Smith in Chapel Hill and within a week Smith was back in New York, but she was cautious about undertaking another Broadway production, since "And Never Yield" had fared so poorly. She wrote in the New York Times:

I made it very plain to Helen Strauss, my agent, that I wouldn't work on the play under any circumstances. I came to New York and, accompanied by my agent, went to meet Mr. Abbott. Outside his office door I again told her very firmly that I wouldn't work on the play.

Mr. Abbott and I started discussing the form the musical would take. I began making suggestions. Miss Strauss broke in to say: "It is understood that Miss Smith does not wish to work on the play." I looked at her blankly and said: "But I am working on it." So we began collaborating ten minutes after we met.

Smith could not help herself: like a fish seeking water, she went back to the stage, collaborating with a man. The producer put out a call for backers, and there was no shortage of "angels" to fund the show. William S. Paley from CBS took the largest percentage, and produced a record of the musical. Smith's former agent, Leland Hayward, took a percentage, as did the actor Johnnie Johnston, and Judith Abbott, George Abbot's daughter. The New York Herald Tribune reported that Smith was a "two-percenter" , but actually she got 3%, 2% for rights to the novel and 1% for collaborating on the script. Frank MacGregor at Harper & Brothers didn't hold Smith to the contract whereby they got 50% of the everything; she gave them 10% instead.

Collaboration

By February Smith and Abbott were writing letters daily while Smith was living sometimes at Nag's Head, sometimes in New York, and more and more rarely in her house on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill. Abbott had sailed South America on Feb. 10th, but Smith wrote "I have his schedule and each night I mail a new scene to another port of call." They had a first draft by March. Sometimes they wrote separate drafts, sent them to each other, rejected each other's efforts, and started again. Smith later wrote:

I think it was one of the most amiable collaborations in dramatic history.

After the fourth draft, we could no longer say, "My lines," or "Your lines." They were our lines.

Well, after ten months, we had what we called a working script. It was a thin little thing of ninety-four typed pages. All of a sudden the slight script became the center of intense activity.

I answered no mail, resented outside phone calls.

Cast of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" the Musical

Irving Berlin wanted to do the score and the producers waited for him, but it turned out that he was too exhausted from just having finished another show. Arthur Schwartz was chosen to write the music, Dorothy Fields to write the libretto, Jo Mielziner to design the scenery, Irene Sharff the costumes, and Herbert Ross the choreography. Judith Abbott was put in charge of casting. Early on, Shirley Booth was chosen for the part of Cissy so that Cissy's role grew to accommodate the star. Johnny Johnston, "familiar to movie, radio, TV and phonograph records fans" was a popular choice for Johnnie Nolan. Nomi Mitty was chosen as Francie, and other roles were played by Nathaniel Frey, Dody Heath, Maida Reade, Harland Dixon, James Little, Joe Calvan and Billy Parsons. However, they could not find a "Katie Nolan": "None [of the actresses auditioning] could be imagined on their knees scrubbing floors in a Brooklyn tenement." Smith felt that the part was "so truthful and so untheatrical" that it was difficult to find an actress to fit it. Finally they auditioned a violinist who had never acted on stage or sung professionally. Even though her hands shook while auditioning, her acting wasn't polished and her voice didn't project, she was chosen for the part.

The musical comedy "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" went into rehearsal in February, 1951, and from then on Smith lived in New York at the Hotel Edison, 228 West 47th Street, across from the Alvin Theater; she worked from ten in the morning until midnight. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" opened March 19 in the Schubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, for a one week trial run. After New Haven, "the show's executives were violently at odds on whether or not to retain a quite colorful brothel scene." As usual, Smith tried to stay out of the melee; she said "There's no fancy house like that in Brooklyn anyway. They all sit around in wrappers." They hashed it out, and when the show next opened, in the Forrest Theater in Philadelphia, the brothel scene was gone.

The producers, director and writers were still working on the musical when it went through its first performances. Leland Hayward sat in the back of the theater and added his criticism. Smith recalled that the hardest work was the continual revisions while she show was running. After New Haven, they took out two scenes and a song, and while in Philadelphia they took out two more songs and three or four scenes, and added one song and a scene. It changed the intent of the novel completely: the story became half Cissy's and half Katie's, and Francie didn't even appear until the second act. Finally it opened in New York to an advance sale of $325,000 and a legal limit of 30 standees. Smith finally had her show on Broadway:

Three million persons bought her book, ten times as many saw it as a movie. But Betty Smith, who always wanted to write a play, will hit her personal peak of excitement before a very small audience . . . when she arrives early at the Alvin Theater, on April 19, so she can watch more famous people arrive late for the opening night of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Reviews of the Musical Comedy

Smith waited anxiously for the reviews. Overall, they were good. Many were positive, some even laudatory, but a few mentioned flaws that were all too clear to the public who had come to love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

William Hawkins in the New York World-Telegram & The Sun wrote "This is an experience of real honesty, taste and ingenuity. . . . I find it--Superb." Richard Watts, in the Post Home News, called it "an agreeable show" and in the Mirror, Robert Coleman predicted Alvin Theatre will be packed for months to come, as "another Abbott triumph." Women's Wear Daily wrote that "Broadway has another resounding hit" and Brooks Atkinson wrote that the musical was "One of those happy inspirations that the theater dotes on" and predicted it would have "a long and affectionate career." However, George Jean Nathan wrote in the New York Journal-American that fifty percent of the show was good, but that fifty percent was all in the first act. Otis L. Guernsey Jr. wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune:

There are two shows within the stage version of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," and by far the better one is Shirley Booth singing and carrying on as a somewhat faded good time girl. The other, a watery hymn of failure with musical tears. . . . a monotonous exposition of a mildly pathetic story, shaded off the stage by the spreading foliage of Miss Booth's grand performance.

Part of the problem with the second act was a nightmarish dance with was supposed to reflect Johnny Nolan's delirium tremens. Guernsey called it "Halloween horrors in wildly athletic fashion." The musical an undistinguished one year run. According to Helen Strauss, Smith's agent, part of the failure of the play was that it was rewritten too many times (251).

Unresolved Unhappy Marriage

After the musical "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" was launched in New York, Smith retreated from her intense activity on the stage to some long-overdue business in her personal life. She couldn't return to her house in Chapel Hill: Jones was there. Instead she went to Nag's Head where, as a favor, she played an indian maiden in Paul Green's drama the "Lost Colony" at the Waterside Theatre on Roanoke Island. She also began writing to Finch again. Even though his letters to her were still acrimonious, even hostile, she kept up the correspondence and by May had told him about her plans for divorce and was offering him money to come to New York to see her. Smith also sent a letter to Jones, asking him to leave the Chapel Hill house and find an apartment for himself. She cited the Doctor's diagnosis: "It is necessary to stay out of Chapel Hill on the advice of my doctor, Nicholson of Duke. As you know I was heading for a bad nervous breakdown for the last two years and I had myself hospitalized last spring." In her letters to him, requesting a divorce, she cites that Jones was diagnosed as psycho-neurotic: he was a hypochondriac, and he staged an illness early in the production of the Broadway show to get her back. But Smith was aware of this aspect of his character when she married him:

Your mother told me that your one great fault was in your believing you had all kinds of illnesses and symptoms. She assured me it was all imaginary. At the time of our marriage, Mr. Graves stated that he hoped I'd cure you of your insistence that you were sickly.

She chides him for his self-absorption and his irresponsibility. She also advises him to "start a life with the idea that you are young and healthy and that there isn't anything you can't do." Like any other couple not getting along, Smith found Jones' weaknesses and thrust in the knife. Max Steele remembers an anecdote Smith often told: "You know, Joe was a great bird-watcher. All he really cared about was birds. [Smith would say] I suppose he might have liked me alright if I had feathers and laid eggs." Someone somewhere said that Smith once lit a fire in the chimney to smoke out a nest of Joe's baby birds, but this just seems uncharacteristic of the lore of marital spats; perhaps Smith made it up herself. Later Bob Finch removed all Joe's bird boxes.

Bob Finch (Again)

Strangely, what Smith wanted was a relationship with a man sicker than Jones, and one who was incurable as well. Over the years of his isolation in Missoula, Montana, Finch had begun to drink more and more heavily and had developed pneumonia as well. At the time Smith was writing to him, he was dissipated to the extent that he had nearly have given up on life. His letters were full of morose self-pity, accusations against Smith that she was not helping him enough, and flat-out statements that he was drunk and out of control. He finally agreed to take money from Smith so that he could take a plane out of Missoula, making the condition: "don't give me any problems, because I can not be expected for one moment to cope with them, or do anything but be wrecked by them. If you want to help, do so, but don't tie me into any more knots." Smith sent him money, and within a week Finch had spent it, and wrote to Smith:

You are, no doubt, furiously angry with me, and I don't blame you. On my side, let it only be said that I have had all the unhappiness, misery, tragedy and poverty that I can stand, and that I am, just as quickly as I can accomplish it, drinking myself to death. I will not last more than a year or two at this rate, I am plastered as I write this. The thought of our getting together again forced me to return again to the days when I had some choice - and I have gone to pieces worse than before. It is no good, it never will be any good, it never could be any good. I wanted what I wanted, years ago, you knew better, you forced your own way, and nothing ever in this world, for me, could make it right again. It is gone, it will never be again - you never ever in your lifetime wanted to follow me, but only to drag me along on your own path. I never wanted to go, I still don't want to go - and so we are ruined, and nothing can ever be done about it.

By the next month, he was still saying pretty much the same thing: "Things are too hard to face, so I take the easy, liquid solution"; he says "goodby, don't feel too bitterly toward me, thank you," and "I never imagined life could be so empty."

Smith loved Finch as Francie loved Johnny Nolan: the draw of the artistic, handsome, reclusive, alcoholic was too strong. She was obsessed: she wanted to save him from his own self-destruction, or if not save him, at least live with him, despite all of his faults, and make his final days happy. Smith was still trying to come to terms with the death of her father. In one of the few letters that Finch saved, Smith wrote:

If I were living with you, each night before going to bed I'd ask you to write me a letter. I'd ask that the first one be about the first thing you remember in your life and to describe it and tell your feelings about it. The next day I'd have the letter typed in correct form. And then the next night I'd ask you to write me more - then what happened. And soon there would be a book and it might be better than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

She wanted to give him her own life. In that letter, she went on to tell him that she could not get a divorce in North Carolina, that she had to go to Reno, and that no matter what he does, no matter how he tries to hurt her, she would always understand and love him.

Smith sent him more money, but Finch was out of control. He went to visit some friends and, in his own words, "When I was in Seattle staying with the Savages, I would go down the block, say, to buy a paper, and show up again anywhere from a day to a couple of days later." After spending all the money she sent, Smith finally managed to meet him in Reno where she had gone to get a divorce. The letter that he sent to her following this meeting, Finch wrote that it was a shame that she didn't end her marriage to Jones sooner because he'd never loved anyone but her:

How tragic it was that all those years ago in Chapel Hill we didn't just say to each other that it was forever, and look out for each other from then on. That was really genuinely tragic. Two stupid people.

My dear Betty, my own dear Betty, whenever you feel uncertain, just you remember that noone in all the world could have loved you more than I - how wildly I fell in love with you I will never forget.

This time he planned to meet her and he wouldn't get lost on the way.

Divorce from Jones

Smith divorced Jones and Finch met her in Chapel Hill. From then on, Smith's correspondence tapers off considerably. She entered a private world with the man who she loved, despite his faults. She took care of him. They went fishing and played bingo at Nag's Head in the summers and lived in the dream house during the winters, sometimes taking trips to see Smith's daughters. Smith's family was around her as well: Mary, (who had just given birth to "Bonnie Mary"), Walter, Candy and Johnny; Nancy visited for a month, and Smith found herself busy. Smith avoided any contact with Harper & Brothers. She probably needed a rest just as much as Finch did.

Car Accident

Then a terrible thing happened, a marker that had serious consequences for her health. In August of 1952, she and Bob had a car accident while Bob was driving. Smith hand-wrote a letter to Jack Fischer describing the accident:

It was a bad accident. The Negro driver who hit us was given six months on the road. He had no lights, no brakes, no driver's license, no insurance and he was drunk. We were on our side but couldn't get off the road as there was a 25 ft drop. The injuries were painful and slow-healing. Have permanent scars on my face and will have on legs after they heal. Have been in this pretty, little country hospital [60 miles from Chapel Hill] for one month, and half a week. Will go home to wait until my legs heal because I am getting so depressed. Fingers broken on right hand and will be in splints another month. Makes it very hard to write. Can't use typewriter at all. My car is a total wreck and is being sold for junk. -- Incidentally this driver, where we were about to pass each other, suddenly swerved over and came at us on our side. I had the glove compartment opened, examining a road may by the little light. The open door of the compartment was driven like a wedge into my legs to the bone. My head went through the windshield. Bob Finch who was driving has a deep scar on face and a broken knee cap. He will wear a cast another month and then may have to be operated upon.

Smith experienced so many problems from this accident that it is mentioned in her letters for years to come. One publishing professional recalls being at a cocktail party with Smith years later, and she was still complaining that she had been in a car accident and there was still glass coming out of her body. Her fingers healed during the writing of Maggie-Now, but her legs never healed completely and gave her a great deal of pain.

Bob Finch's Nighmare

Bob had to leave the hospital earlier than Smith because he was finally having his play, "Whistler's Grandmother," produced on Broadway: his dream, too, was coming true. Directly after the accident he went up to New York to begin the production. But when the play opened in December of 1952, it was marred by the appearance of his wife, Marjorie Estelle. He had been trying to get a divorce from her, but she had been resisting his efforts. She borrowed money to follow him to New York and harass him there: she was seeking revenge. She wrote him letters, addressed to the theatre, from her hotel, offering him a divorce in one sentence, taking away the offer in the next. Finch had been separated from her for most of the time during the previous two years, and she knew that he was not returning to her. He had written to her that if her ever returned to her "I will go back to being a middle-aged drunkard, living on the handouts of my friends until I eventually land in jail." When his play was about to go on, she had written to him that she had anemia related to a monthly loss of blood and that she may have cancer and that, nevertheless, she was coming to New York to visit him. Both were vituperative, and both blamed their illnesses on the other. But Marjorie was crazy. She let her vindictive fantasies go wild when she wrote: "The two of you brother and sister having illicit relations in diverse parts of Los Angeles. How jolly. . . . Of course your dear B.S. will welcome this bawdy publicity. But I can hurt her through her money bags."

Marjorie attended the opening night of Finch's Broadway play, but she was disappointed not to see Smith: Mary and Walter were there, in Smith's seat instead. Since Finch did not respond to her notes and calls, she lay in wait for him at the stage door, but she missed him by a few moments. Her goal, as stated in her letters, was only to see him one more time: "I'd give the rest of my life for a happy hour with you again." She also wanted money as a divorce settlement, but she was not sure of the amount. In March, she had asked for as much as $25,000 but once in New York she named the amount she had borrowed to get to New York, $600. Her real motive was probably to embarrass Finch and cause trouble in his relationship with Smith.

As a consequence, Smith and Finch had been fighting by letter and phone. Finch wrote to Smith:

My goodness, how you upset me over the phone. If there are always to be these wild misunderstandings, bringing on terrible quarrels, I just don't know. Due to the general insecurity we have had a very bad effect on each other for a long time. I am sorry about not communicating -I just thought it was understood I would handle things, as per our phone conversation, and that you'd be better off to be left out of it. I can't see that was as foolish and cruel as you make it out to be.

The next day he sent her a loving letter apologizing for worrying her. Eventually Marjorie went back to Missoula and Finch managed to get a divorce.

Second Dream

Smith's life with Finch settled into a routine, and she corresponded very little. Even a letter from her daughter Nancy, who was expecting her first child in November, went unanswered. In November, however, Smith and Finch drove from Chapel Hill to Denver to be with Nancy when she had her baby, and the next year she helped her daughter Mary open a gift shop in Chapel Hill. The following year Nancy visited her with her two children, but it wasn't until 1956 that Smith recovered enough from the accident to begin writing again, and then she got back in contact with Frank MacGregor, Jack Fischer, and Helen Strauss. In 1957 Mary remarried and moved to Washington, which left Smith a little depressed, but in that year she also realized a long dream--she married Bob Finch.

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