August is both Women's Equality Day and the birthday of writer Zona Gale (1874-1938). Today happens to be the 150th anniversary of her birth. As Gale was a suffragist and a feminist, the alignment of significances represented by the day feels fortuitous.
Almost completely forgotten nowadays, in her time Gale was considered part of that great wave of midwestern writers of realism that included Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Frank Norris, Booth Tarkington, Sherwood Anderson, et al. Wisconsin was Gale's turf. She was educated at the State University there, earning a couple of masters degrees. She began her professional career as a writer at Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Journal prior to moving on up to the New York World in 1901, only to return to her hometown of Portage three years later. She wrote novels, short stories and poems inspired by small town Wisconsin life.
Gale's most significant work, the novel Miss Lulu Bett (1920) was adapted for the Broadway stage by the author, winning her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the following year, the first woman to do so. William C. deMille directed the silent movie version of the play, also in 1921. Walter Huston starred as the title character in her later Broadway play, Mr. Pitt (1924). Her 1923 play Faint Perfume was adapted into a 1925 movie of the same name by Louis Gasnier, and starring a young William Powell. Gale's short story "The Way" became the 1934 movie When Strangers Meet, with the ensemble cast of Richard Cromwell, Arline Judge, Lucien Littlefield, Charles Middleton, Hale Hamilton, Maude Eburne, Barbara Weeks, Sheila Terry, Luis Alberni, Herman Bing, Vera Gordon, et al. A couple of her other stories were adapted for live television drama in the 1950s.
As we mentioned, Gale was deeply involved in progressive causes, in particular the struggle for women's equality. After the deaths of her parents, with whom she lived, in 1924 and 1929, Gale became deeply involved in spiritualism, which greatly altered the focus and tone of her writing, to the displeasure of some readers and critics. While Miss Lulu Bett was a critique of the institution of marriage, Gale did eventually bite the bullet and marry an old friend, businessman and banker William Breese in 1928. She also experienced motherhood late in life by adapting a young relative, and becoming a step-mother to Breese's grown daughter.
Today several historic buildings in Portage, Wisconsin contribute to her legacy: The Museum at the Portage (in her former mansion, which was also the town library from 1944 to 1994), The Zona Gale House (the previous house she shared with her parents, which is now the home of the Women's Civic League of Portage), and the Portage Center for the Arts (which has a Zona Gale Theatre). There is also this historical marker. Kudos to the town for doing so much to keep her memory alive when so many readers and critics have forgotten her!
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