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Theatrical Transition 1930-1935: Yale to the WPA

Even though things were going so well in Smith's new life as a writer, she was beginning to experience difficulties in her personal life. 1930 was a difficult year for Smith, a year of transition. Her stepfather, was continually sick, and died in 1933. George's parents, who had moved to the midwest, also became ill. His mother had a stroke and died, and his father followed shortly thereafter, in 1930. Smith's correspondence mainly stopped, and she did not write as much--she only sold five articles (to Joy Stories and the Washingtonian) for $62.78. Perhaps more significantly, she did not add up her writing totals.

The Smiths decided to return to the East and start anew (again). First George spent the summer at Amherst College as a graduate student. The two girls spent the 3rd and 4th grades with their aunt and their grandmother in Queens. If her plays can be understood as performance pieces on her life, Smith could have been summering in a cottage at Lake Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, since when the heroine leaves her husband, she goes to the shore. In two versions of the play, they reconcile. In June of 1931 Smith received the $1000 for the Hopwood prize, and she enrolled in Yale. George taught at the college of New Haven and eventually became an assistant professor in the Institute of International Studies at Yale. The couple reconciled for a year, and the girls spent 5th and 6th grades in North Haven.

Yale School of Drama and George Pierce Baker

Yale was an important stage for Smith. She studied under George Pierce Baker and was eventually one of a select group, Baker's dozen. In 1932, She had two one-act plays produced: "Mannequin's Maid" on Jan. 18th, and "Blind Alley" on May 23rd. She was "very much dismayed when I discovered that the technical aspects of production were much more important than the writing of the play." She undertook to learn about production, and acted in and directed other people's plays as well. There she met people who would be useful to her throughout her career. Smith remembers that she was a classmate of Elia Kazan, who they called "Gadget," but Kazan has no memory of Smith. But most importantly, Smith met Bob Finch there. Finch became "the love of her life." Finch was everything that George was not: artistic, and needy.

Robert Finch

When Finch and Smith went to Chapel Hill, the town newspaper gave this background on him:

After studying at the University of Montana Robert Finch did newspaper work and led an orchestra. In New York he studied at the Elizabeth Grimball studio of the theatre and later joined Eva LeGallienne's studio group. He has played in several Broadway productions and in stock companies. A few years ago he came to the university here to study playwrighting under Mr. Koch, and he has attended the Yale drama school. He has been stage manager of several new York productions and done radio work.

Bob Finch one of four children and moved to Dillon, Montana, when he was only six weeks old, in 1909. His father taught education and Geology at Western Montana College, and his mother was a pianist for the Methodist Church. One of his brothers grew up to take over his grandfather's farm in Iowa, another earned his doctorate at Yale, becoming an English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy; his sister became a violinist. Finch was the baby of the family, and he was the most artistic of all. Like Smith, he undertook that most difficult of professions, a playwright.

Street Smarts

Now that Smith was back in the east, she was able to use her native New York intelligence to track down opportunities offered by that city, which Finch never figured out how to do. Smith was always expanding her business skills: one of the most important was that she learned how to use the press to her benefit. During her first year at Yale, she had a three-act play, "Candy Farm," produced in the Detroit Playhouse in the Institute of Arts; the newspapers covered it, every step of the way. First they printed an article "Author to See Play" which read: "She is best known locally as the wife of George H.E. Smith, a founder of the Detroit Institute of Adult Education, and an authority on international relations." It is likely that Smith fed them the information, because the article also said that Smith was a graduate of the University of Michigan and that the play had won the 1931 Avery Hopwood Award. Whether or not Smith actually went to Detroit to see her play performed, or whether that was another fabrication for the purposes of publicity, I don't know. Then she probably sent this article to the New York Times, since an article appeared a week later, stating the same mis-information. She even had an announcement in Variety. When the play was performed, however, the reviews were bad: "It is, in its entirety, too immature a work to be considered seriously. . . . " Smith was also good at recycling her work. Later that play was optioned by three producers in succession, and was eventually produced as "Sawdust Heart" in Hoboken, at the Stevens Theatre, in June of 1935.

Commercial Theater

Smith was also busy making money by selling her plays in New York City. In 1932, she began one of the most important correspondences she ever had, and began one of her closest, and most supportive friendships. Smith started writing to Barrett H. Clark, who at that time was an editor at Samuel French, the "Oldest Play Publishers in the World with Offices in London, New York and Los Angeles." Clark bought several of her plays for the Dramatist's Play Service and offered to work as her agent and try to sell some of her plays to the movies. In March of 1932, she came down from Yale to visit him in the city. He gave her good advice, like saying most of her plays were still "'prentice work," but he continually encouraged her as well.

Smith's full-length, unpublished plays recount the story of a wife who leaves her philandering husband, their reunion, and their final parting in a variety of ways, as if Smith were trying out various scenarios for her life. George and Betty Smith had reconciled in 1932, but try as they might, they were no longer getting along. In 1933 they separated legally. In later years Smith would blame the break-up of her marriage on her mother-in-law. She wrote "My first mother-in-law was hateful and ruined my marriage. . . . I hate mothers-in-law. . . ." But it was also probable that Smith just wanted her own life, and not his.

George Smith Background

George was very ambitious. His obituary recounts his career:

Mr. Smith was also a staff director of the Republican Policy Committee in the United States Senate, which he helped organize with the late Senator, Robert E. Taft in 1944. He served as its secretary and director until 1953.

Mr. Smith was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1956.

He collaborated with the late Dr. Charles A. Beard on several books, the best known of which was "The Old and the New Deal." He collaborated on "Industrial Organization and Management" an outstanding text book now in its fourth edition.

He wrote humorous reviews and articles for legal and political science journals and for the Book Review Section of the New York Times.

George shared the responsibility for the children with her, sometimes having them visit during the summer. This must have been helpful for her. It meant that she did not have to support them for a short period of time, and also that she had a break to do some of her own work.

Separation

After the separation, Smith found it harder and harder to be a student. At first she tried to continue her studies at Yale, borrowing money for her tuition and getting several paid directing jobs, through Yale. One was organizing and directing a musical for a large Catholic Church, and it was so much work that she decided never to do something like that again. She wrote skits for the Woodmont Follies at the Woodmont Country Club. One of her associates from that time wrote about how they used to bum around together and "that summer of 32 or was it 33 when we three used to haul those broken down flats home made drops in that dilapidated Chevy sedan of yours" and they would "blow off the top" while driving to Woodmont. She also taught an evening course in drama at New Haven College in the fall of 1933.

Smith was becoming disillusioned with her studies as a playwright: George Pierce Baker had died and she could not get accustomed to Walter Prichard Eaton, who took his place. Eaton criticized her play, "Divorce Lawyer," too quickly: he thought it was written by a student with no experience of the law profession. Smith never forgave him. Smith, at this point, was too overwhelmed with trouble to forgive him. Suddenly she found herself a single mother without income and two daughters to support.

Divorced with Children

Smith left Yale and returned to her mother's house in Woodside, Queens. As a divorced mother, she began to suffer from economic problems that would plague her until the publication of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She bought and read Modern Romance and True Story and, for about a year and a half, turned out confession stories for 2-5 cents a word. She made about $1,000 before the market went dry. It is here that the conflict between her commercial and artistic sides began. She wrote that, in order to get enough money to pay rent, she sold five hundred dollars worth of stories in six weeks, but then "I tried to do some decent writing but the confession technique got in the way. I tried to write more confession stories but my literary technique got in the way. . . . " Something had to give:

Now it was the fall of 1934 and I was very destitute and discouraged. I could no longer write things for money and had forgotten how to write for pleasure and satisfaction. The children became ill and the rent was unpaid and food itself was a grave problem. Thought of remarrying but the person I liked at the time had no job either.

Smith wrote to Barrett Clark and asked him to sell any of her plays for twenty-five or fifty dollars. Clark arranged for her to get some money from the Author's League, and started the machinery for getting her a job with the WPA Theatre. Smith landed a job that paid $24.50 a week. Clark wrote "I am glad to know that the clouds are shifting a little and you are getting ahead a bit."

Smith made enough money to rent a top floor railroad apartment at 63 Richmond St. in Brooklyn, for $40 a month from her brother-in-law, William Hall. It was only a few stops away from her mother's house by the subway, so she was able to have some help with the children. The girls moved with her there and enrolled in school: the family was together again, minus George. Nancy Smith Pfeiffer remembers: "we had coal we had to shovel into the furnace, I used to do that, I knew how to bank a furnace and she was living there I was going to the Junior High, in 7th grade, and she would commute every day to Manhattan." Smith first was an actress and played the subway circuit. Then it was called the C.W.A. and she worked in a building at the Port Authority.

Works Project Administration and the Federal Theater Project

In 1935 things began to happen in the Federal Government that would affect Betty Smith's writing career: the Works Project Administration began. Hallie Flanagan was made director of the Federal Theater Project and was given two million dollars to be spent immediately on relieving unemployment in the theater field. Flanagan's goal was inspired by Smith's teacher, George Pierce Baker: she wanted to make a "national federation of regional theatres," based on the idea that "the theatre had an important social and educational contribution to make to American culture" (Bently 190). Both Smith and Flanagan believed that art and education were the keys to solving the world's ills:

The Arts Projects, Hallie concluded, would be "part of a tremendous re-thinking, re-building and re-dreaming of America." They would represent "the new frontier in America, a frontier against disease, dirt, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and despair." Her dream and that of the others was the dream of the New Deal. . . . (189)

In the summer of 1935, Smith was transferred to the Federal Theatre Project as a playreader, and then she began working on the Living Newspaper. If there had not been funding from the government for the arts, at this time, it is likely that Betty Smith would have stopped writing altogether in order to support her children. However, because of the New Deal ideals, Smith was able to eke out a living and continue to write. If it were not for the Works Progress Administration, it is unlikely that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would have been written.

The Living Newspaper was based on a communist idea: "In Russia, where illiteracy was widespread, staged dramatizations of current issues served to publicize the new regime's sweeping social reforms (Bently 210). Flanagan chose this method because it was an inexpensive alternative to the sets and costumes required in traditional theatre. The rules for the Living Newspaper read, in part:

Authenticity should be the guiding principle in Living Newspaper production. Let it be kept in mind that some of the most fascinating and also dramatic statements are to be found in the daily columns of the press. Assemble a wide, firm foundation of factual material and upon this can best be built the architecture of good theatre.

The research department of any Living Newspaper Group can well be likened to the lens of a camera. . . . Full and sympathetic discussions between the battery of dramatists and the research workers should take place at many points during the production of the script.

The Living Newspaper taught Smith skills that she would later use in all of her writing: the choice of detailed factual material as subject matter and her ability to work closely with others, writers, directors, producers and editors in the production process.

Smith had probably heard about Proff Koch, Paul Green, and the Carolina Playmakers from Bob Finch, who had gone to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate work. When she (and Finch) heard that Fred Koch was looking for theater professionals in the South, she jumped at the chance. She immediately sent a telegram to Paul Green, who was choosing the participants, and begged him to ask for her, saying that he wouldn't be sorry. Paul Green did, and he was not: they became fast friends.

The seeds that planted the Tree in Smith's mind were already in her mind in 1934. As her daughter recalls:

On the way home from work one evening during the depression, Mother passed a bookstore whose window displayed a new book by the North Carolina novelist, Thomas Wolfe. Only a few minutes hesitation: The three dollars in her purse would buy lunch for a week or....She came home with a copy of "Of Time and the River" under her arm.

Smith used that book to fuel her own memory; in it she scribbled her first notes and an outline which would become A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But this novel of memory could not be written in Brooklyn. Smith had more traveling to do first. Finch and Smith set off to North Carolina together to find their dreams.

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