Eighty years ago, in the winter and spring of 1944, Brooklyn-born author Betty Smith was entering a new chapter of life.
A year earlier, she was an unknown writer, negotiating with her publisher about manuscript edits and the date of publication for her first book, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” a semi-autobiographical novel about the poor but spirited Nolan family.
Now she was one of the lucky few. Her book was spotted in cafes, on buses and in bookstores all over town. The following year, when it was being made into a film directed by Elia Kazan, Life magazine reported, “Betty Smith’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (2,500,000 copies sold) has become one of the best-loved novels of our time.”
New York in the 1940s was not the city we know today. The Empire State Building had not reached its full height, nor had the statue of “Alice in Wonderland” taken up residence in Central Park. And it would be decades before anyone was humming along to a tune that brashly commanded, “Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today, I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!”
Brooklyn, too, was still becoming itself – and no other 20th-century American novel did quite so much for the borough’s reputation.
Readers fall for Brooklyn
During World War II, writes law professor Molly Guptill Manning, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” was one of the most popular books among the Armed Services Editions, which were mass-produced paperbacks selected by a panel of literary experts for distribution to the U.S. military during World War II.
Eighty years ago, in the winter and spring of 1944, Brooklyn-born author Betty Smith was entering a new chapter of life.
A year earlier, she was an unknown writer, negotiating with her publisher about manuscript edits and the date of publication for her first book, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” a semi-autobiographical novel about the poor but spirited Nolan family.
Now she was one of the lucky few. Her book was spotted in cafes, on buses and in bookstores all over town. The following year, when it was being made into a film directed by Elia Kazan, Life magazine reported, “Betty Smith’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ (2,500,000 copies sold) has become one of the best-loved novels of our time.”
New York in the 1940s was not the city we know today. The Empire State Building had not reached its full height, nor had the statue of “Alice in Wonderland” taken up residence in Central Park. And it would be decades before anyone was humming along to a tune that brashly commanded, “Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today, I want to be a part of it: New York, New York!”