Dodie Smith would have reached her centenary in 1996, but she died in 1990 at the respectable age of 94, having seen The Hundred and One Dalmatians turned into a successful film by Walt Disney. According to this book, she had three distinct periods of fame in the 1930s with the "hit" play Autumn Crocus, followed by Dear Octopus; as a novelist, in exile in America, with the book I Capture the Castle; and then her final round of success when she returned to live in England with her long term husband, Alec Beesley. Dalmatians was written as a children's book and was followed by a sequel and by several novels. Originally an unsuccessful actress from Manchester, Dodie Smith seems to have been uninhibited, mildly eccentric, outspoken and, above all, energetic and pushy.