Winchell Smith

Winchell Smith (April 5, 1871 – June 10, 1933) was an American playwright, book writer, and Broadway performer born in Hartford, Connecticut. Over a career spanning more than two decades, he wrote or co-wrote a succession of major Broadway hits and became one of the most commercially successful dramatists of his era, leaving behind what his New York Times obituary described as perhaps the largest fortune ever amassed by an American playwright.

Smith attended Hartford Public High School before entering the theater through a family connection: his uncle was the actor and playwright William Gillette, whose company Smith joined at the age of eighteen as an assistant property man. He subsequently became a stage director within that company, and three years after joining made his first small acting appearance in The Prodigal Daughter. He worked as an actor for roughly twelve years before transitioning to playwriting, appearing on Broadway between 1901 and 1905 in productions that included A Holy Terror and Bobby Burnit, among others.

His shift to dramaturgy came in 1906 when he was brought in as an assistant to Frederic Thompson, owner of the New York Hippodrome, who had a stage adaptation of the novel Brewster's Millions in rehearsal. Prominent dramatists including George Howells Broadhurst, Augustus Thomas, and William Gillette advised Thompson that the novel could not be successfully dramatized. Smith disagreed and was given the task of rewriting the play alongside Byron Ongley. Despite continued skepticism from the same experts, Thompson staged the revised version, and it proved a substantial hit. The production launched Smith's career as a dramatist and marked the beginning of a pattern: throughout his career he wrote one original play but adapted or reworked numerous others into successful productions.

Smith frequently collaborated with fellow members of The Lambs club, which he had joined in 1899 and remained a member of until his death. His collaborators included Gillette, Augustus Thomas, and the producer John Golden, with whom he formed a particularly productive partnership. In 1913 Smith and Victor Mapes staged a revised version of Bronson Howard's 1887 play The Henrietta, retitled The New Henrietta, which starred William H. Crane and Douglas Fairbanks. The Fortune Hunter, which ran during the 1909–10 season, and The Boomerang, which ran during the 1915–16 season, were among his Broadway successes of that period.

Smith's association with Golden deepened with Turn to the Right, first staged in August 1916, which helped launch Golden's producing career. Their most celebrated collaboration, however, was Lightnin', co-written with Frank Bacon and produced by Golden. Bacon, who was fifty-five at the time he met Smith, had written the play years earlier but had been unable to attract a producer. The comedy centered on a rustic, often intoxicated character who ran a hotel straddling the Nevada-California border and was known for spinning elaborate yarns. Smith recognized the play's potential, agreed to rewrite it, and arranged for it to open at the Gaiety Theatre in August 1918, with Bacon playing the lead role. One critic compared the central character favorably to Rip Van Winkle, and President Woodrow Wilson, attending with his wife, told Golden in his box that it was the most entertaining play they had ever seen. Lightnin' ran for 1,291 performances on Broadway, a record at the time. When it closed, the cast paraded down Broadway to Pennsylvania Station, led by Mayor John Francis Hylan and Commissioner Grover Whalen, before departing on a national tour. The play also ran in Australia and South Africa. A London production was planned for the Shaftesbury Theatre with Bacon in the lead, but Bacon died in 1922, and the production, supervised by Smith, did not open there until January 1925.

In 1919 Golden organized a meeting of producers — including Smith, Fred Zimmerman, Archibald Selwyn, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., and L. Lawrence Weber — to address shared concerns such as censorship and ticket speculation. The gathering led to the formation of the Producing Managers' Association. Smith and Golden continued working together in subsequent years. In 1926 Smith determined that Marc Connelly's comedy The Wisdom Tooth should be staged at the Little Theatre; after failing in tryouts in Washington, D.C., and Hartford, it ran for 160 performances in New York. Later that same year, Smith's Two Girls Wanted achieved even greater success.

Smith's work extended into film. In 1920 he served as co-director and producer on The Saphead, presented in conjunction with Marcus Loew and made by Metro Pictures. The film was based on The New Henrietta; Douglas Fairbanks, who had appeared in the stage version, was committed to United Artists, and Buster Keaton took the role instead. Smith's co-director was Herbert Blaché. The 1925 film version of Lightnin' was directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Frances Marion. That same year Ford also directed Thank You, produced by Golden and adapted from a play by Smith and Tom Cushing, starring George O'Brien; that film is presumed lost. A second film version of Lightnin' appeared on October 31, 1930.

In 1917 a mansion called Lambs Gate was built for Smith in Farmington, Connecticut, its name derived from gates purchased from the entrance of The Lambs club in New York City. The estate covered nearly five acres, and Smith later renamed the property Millstreams. He persuaded D.W. Griffith to shoot the 1920 film Way Down East, starring Lillian Gish, in Farmington; an old grist mill on the property, built around 1778 by the Cowles family and still operational at the time, appears in the film. Smith also attempted to encourage grain cultivation in Connecticut, investing in harvesting machinery and contracting local farmers to plant rye, wheat, and buckwheat, though his effort to sell ground flours proved unsuccessful and he converted the mill's output to ground cow feeds and middlings.

Smith died in Farmington on June 10, 1933, and is buried at Riverside Cemetery there. Despite a reputation for spending freely, he left a substantial fortune at his death. He is also remembered through the Winchell Smith Fund, established in his name, which provides financial assistance to Lambs members unable to pay their dues or bar bill.