Dodie Smith

Dorothy Gladys Smith or "Dodie" Smith (1896 – 1990) was an English children's novelist and playwright, known best for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Other works include I Capture the Castle (1948), and The Starlight Barking. The Hundred and One Dalmatians novel was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney.

Her first novel, I Capture the Castle, was later adapted into an American movie on July 11, 2003 by Director Tim Fywell, Producer David Parfitt, and Playwriter Heidi Thomas.

Early life
Smith was born on May 3, 1896 in Whitefield, near Bury in Lancashire, England. She was an only child of Ernest and Ella Smith (née Furber). Ernest Smith was a bank manager who died in 1898, when Dodie was two years old. Dodie and her mother moved to Old Trafford to live with her maternal grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. Dodie's childhood home, known as Kingston House, was at 609 Stretford Road. It faced the Manchester Ship Canal, and she lived with her mother, grandparents, two aunts and three uncles. In her autobiography, Look Back with Love (1974), she credits her grandfather William, who is one of three reasons who inspired her to become a playwright.

The first reason, William Furber was an avid theatregoer, they spent together long talks about Shakespeare and melodrama. The second reason, her uncle Harold Furber, an amateur actor, read plays with her and introduced her to contemporary drama. Thirdly, her mother had wanted to be an actress, an ambition frustrated except for walk-on parts, once in the company of Sarah Bernhardt. Smith wrote her first play at the age of ten, and she began acting in minor roles during her teens at the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society. Presently there is a blue plaque commemorating the building where Dorothy grew up. The formative years of Dorothy's childhood were spent at this house.