Editing Dodie Smith (section)

===Career after acting===

Even though Smith had sold a movie script, ''Schoolgirl Rebels'', using the pseudonym Charles Henry Percy,<ref name="Hile 2004"/> and written a one-act play, ''British Talent'', that premiered at the Three Arts Club in 1924, she still had a hard time finding steady work.<ref name="Hadsel 1982"/> In 1923, she accepted a job in [[Heals (department store)|Heal and Son]]'s furniture store in London and became the toy buyer (and mistress of the chairman, [[Ambrose Heal]]).<ref name="oxforddnb.com">Alan Crawford, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33786 "Heal, Sir Ambrose (1872–1959)"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151027171035/http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33786 |date=27 October 2015 }}, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 12 August 2007</ref> She wrote her first staged play, ''Autumn Crocus'', in 1931 using the pseudonym C.L. Anthony. Its success, and the discovery of her identity by journalists, inspired the newspaper headline, "Shopgirl Writes Play".<ref name="Smith 1979">{{harvnb|Smith|1979}}</ref> The show starred [[Fay Compton]] and [[Francis Lederer]].<ref name="Hadsel 1982"/>

Smith's fourth play ''[[Call It a Day (play)|Call It a Day]]'' was acted by the [[Theatre Guild]] on 28 January 1936 and ran for 194 performances. It ran in London for 509 performances, the longest run of any of Smith's plays to date. American critic [[Joseph Wood Krutch]] compared it favorably to [[George S. Kaufman]] and [[Edna Ferber]]'s play ''[[Dinner at Eight (play)|Dinner at Eight]]'' and [[Edward Knoblock]]'s ''Grand Hotel''. He said the London production "stays pretty consistently on the level of comedy and imposes upon its brittle structure no greater emotional weight than that structure is capable of bearing."<ref name="Hadsel 1982"/>

The success of ''Call It a Day'' enabled Smith to purchase The Barretts, a cottage near the village of [[Finchingfield]], [[Essex]]. Her next play, ''[[Bonnet Over the Windmill]]'' (1937), was not as successful. It concerns three aspiring young actresses and their landlady, a middle-aged former music-hall performer, and the young women's attempts to attract the attention of a playwright and a theatre producer with hopes of obtaining dramatic roles.<ref name="Hadsel 1982"/>

Her next play, ''[[Dear Octopus (play)|Dear Octopus]]'' (1938), featured Dame [[Marie Tempest]] and [[John Gielgud|Sir John Gielgud]]. The unusual title refers to a toast in the play: "To the family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to." [[Brooks Atkinson]] termed Smith a "domestic panoramatist" and compared her to many English novelists, from [[Samuel Richardson]] to [[Archibald Marshall]]; he also described her as the "appointed recorder" of the English family. The production in London ran for 376 performances, compared to that in [[New York City|New York]] of only 53.

When Smith travelled to America to cast ''Dear Octopus'', she brought with her Alec Macbeth Beesley (son of ''[[RMS Titanic|Titanic]]'' survivor [[Lawrence Beesley]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Grove |first1=Valerie |title=Dear Dodie : The Life of Dodie Smith |date=1996 |publisher=Chatto & Windus |location=London |isbn=978-0-7011-5753-1 |page=67 |url=https://archive.org/details/deardodielifeofd0000grov/page/66/mode/2up}}</ref>), who had also worked at Heal's and had become her longtime friend and business manager. The two married in 1939. She would not have another play staged in London until 1952, though ''Lovers and Friends'' did play at the [[Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre|Plymouth Theatre]] in 1943. The show featured [[Katharine Cornell]] and [[Raymond Massey]].<ref name="Hadsel 1982"/>

Smith lived for many years in Dorset Square, [[Marylebone]], London, which a [[blue plaque]] now commemorates; her date of birth is shown inaccurately as 1895 instead of 1896.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.blueplaqueplaces.co.uk/dodie-smith-blue-plaque-in-london-2242 |title=Blue Plaque |access-date=9 February 2017 |archive-date=11 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170211080914/http://www.blueplaqueplaces.co.uk/dodie-smith-blue-plaque-in-london-2242 |url-status=dead }}</ref>