page_title: Dodie Smith
section_title: Move to London
hierarchical_section_title: Dodie Smith / Biography / Move to London
caption_attribution_description: English: Dorset Square, LondonThis is a photo of listed building number 1066897.
context_page_description: Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith 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, and The Starlight Barking. The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 movie version. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read.
context_section_description: In 1910 Ella remarried and moved to London with her new husband and the 14-year-old Dodie, who attended school in both Manchester and at St Paul's Girls' School. In 1914 Dodie entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Her first role came in Arthur Wing Pinero's play Playgoers. Other roles after RADA included a Chinese girl in Mr. Wu, a parlor maid in Ye Gods, and a young mother in Niobe, which was directed by Basil Dean, who would later buy her play Autumn Crocus.
  She was also in the Portsmouth Repertory Theatre, travelled with a YMCA company to entertain troops in France during World War I, toured with the French comedy French Leave, and appeared as Anne in Galsworthy's play The Pigeon at the Everyman Theatre and at a festival in Zürich, Switzerland. During her mother's illness while dying of breast cancer, Dodie and her mother became devotees of Christian Science.
caption: Blue plaque, 18 Dorset Square
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