Even when her mother described her first play as dull and boring, she did not stop trying to succeed. Soon she became a young actress for many theaters after studying at the London’s Royal Academy of Art. During World War I, Smith went to France to help amuse the soldiers there and also appeared in a performance of John Galsworthy's Pigeon. In 1923, the actress left the theater to work as a buyer for Heal and Son, a furniture company where she remained for the next eight years, writing for the stage in cinema in her free time. Smith first gained recognition as a playwright, going by the name of C. L. Anthony until 1935. In 1931, Smith sold her play Autumn Crocus to one of her old stage directors. Although she had written a screenplay and a stage play before, Autumn Crocus proved to be the work that turned her career around. Call It a Day was the first play Smith wrote under her own name; also proving to be her most financially rewarding piece. Her plays, generally simple comedies about middle-class life, received much praise, both popular and critical. "The ability to recreate detail, to capture the nuances of everyday conversation, to recognize humor in the trivialities of middle-class life marks the dramas of Dodie Smith," wrote Martha Hadsel. "Her critics sometimes found fault with what they considered her superficiality, but most admitted that her plays provided enjoyable entertainment." Hadsel claimed Smith to be "one of the few successful women dramatists in England and America during the first half of the twentieth century."