Sophie Treadwell

Born in 1885, Sophie Treadwell grew up as an only child in Stockton, California. When she was still quite young, her father left the family and moved to San Francisco, where the future playwright visited him during the summers, experiences that first exposed her to the theater. When she attended the University of California at Berkley in 1902, she began writing and acting in plays while also serving as a correspondent for the college at The San Francisco Examiner. This position was only one of several jobs she held in order to support herself while attending school. During this hectic time Treadwell also dealt with mental illness—a battle against anxiety that would follow her throughout her life, sometimes resulting in lengthy hospital stays. After graduating college in 1906 and marrying a sports writer who worked for the San Francisco Bulletin, Treadwell and her new husband moved to New York, where the young writer became involved with the fight for women’s suffrage. Because of her strong belief in female independence and freedom, she and her husband lived separately in the city as she quickly made connections with important modernist artists. This period saw some of her most important reporting and theatrical writing, and Treadwell became known not only for her impressive undercover and immersive journalism, but also for her advocacy of authors’ rights. By the time she died in 1970, she had written four novels and almost 40 plays, several of which she produced and directed herself and which appeared on Broadway.