She had long conversations with her grandfather, an avid theatergoer, about Shakespeare and melodrama; and her uncle, Harold Furber, an actor in amateur theatricals, read his parts with her and introduced her to the best of contemporary drama. Also, her mother had wanted to be an actress, an ambition frustrated except for walk-on parts, one in the company of Sarah Bernhardt. From an early age, Dodie Smith accompanied the family when they attended amateur and professional productions. She decided at the age of seven to go on the stage, she wrote her first play at the age of ten, and she played bit parts in productions of the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society in her early teens. When she, her mother, and new stepfather arrived in London in 1910, a future stage career seemed almost certain.
Smith's later theatrical experience can be divided into two distinct periods, separated by eight years' employment as a buyer for Heal and Son in London. Having received her early education in Manchester and then at Saint Paul's Girls' School in London, she entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1914 to prepare for the stage.
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