Sophie Treadwell: What Do You Have In Common?

While Sophie Treadwell is best known for Machinal, she also spent time as a journalist, actress, novelist, and playwright of around forty plays. Treadwell was born in Stockton, CA, and moved to San Francisco when she was still a child. Her father took her to see a play when she was six with the Polish actress, Helena Modjeska, and she fell in love with theatre. Her parents divorced when she was eight and her father, though a successful lawyer, neglected to support the family financially. Treadwell had to work throughout high school and college in order to support her mother and herself, and suffered two breakdowns during those times. She attended college at U.C. Berkeley where she studied acting and journalism and worked nights as a language instructor.

Treadwell continued to teach after college in the countryside to get away from her mother. She had articles about life in the country published, signing her name as “S. Treadwell.” Readers were drawn to her style, as they felt like they were receiving a letter from a friend. Many presumed that Treadwell was a male and were surprised that a woman would write about subject matters such as breaking bulls.

Treadwell later moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. She worked in vaudeville until she became disgusted with production demands and the grotesque space. She found work writing memoirs for Helena Modjeska. After Modjeska’s death, Treadwell moved back to San Francisco and moved into journalism as a theatre critic for the San Francisco Bulletin. During this time she married William O. McGeehan, a sports writer, but kept her maiden name. Treadwell became an overnight success in the bay area after she published “An Outcast at the Christian Door,” an article about the reality of available help for prostitutes. She combined her acting and journalism talents to work undercover as a prostitute who replied to ads offering to help women in need. She admitted in her report that until she sought help, she “had never had any particular interest in, nor any particular sympathy for prostitutes” (qtd. in Dickey 28). She found that most organizations that put out ads had no desire to help her and were often rude and impatient. After her article she began to travel around the country to cover top national stories that ranged from actor interviews to wrestling to murder trials. Her husband, perhaps uncomfortable with her growing success and popularity in the bay area, accepted a journalism job in New York shortly after. Treadwell stayed behind in San Francisco until she became weary of the travel time to and from New York and moved in with her husband. Unsettled, she went off to Europe to cover World War I and became the first female war correspondent. As a woman, she was not allowed on the battlefield and ended up covering the experiences of nurses from hospitals. Years later, after the Mexican Revolution, she was the only American granted an interview with revolutionist Poncho Villa on his ranch.

Treadwell’s first produced play, Gringo, was based on growing prejudice and developing immigration laws between Mexicans and Americans that featured a character not unlike Poncho Villa. Like all seven of her plays that were produced, none were considered mainstream enough to appear in commercial theatre as she tended “to experiment with new approaches and unconventional subject matter” (Shafer 255). Most of her plays were based on personal life experiences, though Machinal may have been influenced by the Ruth Snyder murder trial along with previous trials that Treadwell had covered as a journalist, (Treadwell was only a spectator for the Snyder case.) Ruth Snyder had murdered her husband after planning with her lover, Judd Gray. Snyder was found guilty despite strong evidence that her husband was both physically and verbally abusive toward her, and sentenced to death, marking the first execution of a woman in the 20th century for New York. What really captured the public’s attention was the photo of Snyder being electrocuted via hidden camera that a journalist had taped to his leg during the execution. From the trial and photo, Snyder seemed like just an ordinary woman which made the case more appealing and exciting for many.

Treadwell spent her later life publishing articles on Mexico, traveling, and writing novels which were largely based on various plays. She adopted a son from Germany in 1949 and named him William, after her late husband who had been dead for some time. In 1970, Treadwell passed away after a brief stay in a hospital. She donated her works and papers to the University of Arizona.

 

-Erica Paulson

 

Dickey, Jerry and Miriam López-Rodríguez. Broadway’s Bravest Woman: Selected Writings of      Sophie Treadwell. U.S.A.: Southern Illinois University, 2006.

Dickey, Jerry. “The expressionist moment: Sophie Treadwell.” American Women Playwrights.      U.K.: Cambridge University, 1999: 66-81.

Dickey, Jerry. “The ‘Real Lives’ of Sophie Treadwell: Expressionism and the Feminist Aesthetic   in Machinal and For Saxophone.” Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers.           U.S.A.; University of Georgia Press, 1997: 176-184

Shafer, Yvonne. American Women Playwrights, 1900-1950. New York: Peter Lang Publishing,    1995.

“Sophie Treadwell Web Exhibition Homepage.” The University of Arizona University Libraries.    Web. 31 Jan. 2012. <http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/treadwell/&gt;.