Babette Hughes

She was born Helen Babette Plechner in Seattle, Washington on December 28, 1905.[1] In 1923, while an English student at the University of Washington she met the American playwright Glenn Hughes, who had joined the university as an assistant professor of drama in 1919.[2] Secretly married in 1924, they were together for around 20 years. After their divorce in 1944 or 1946, she relocated from Seattle to New York City and married Benn Hall, a public relations executive. Her daughter Mary Anne remained in Seattle, and she returned to Seattle several times to visit. Once Hall died, Hughes took over his public relations firm.[3][4][5]

Hughes frequently wrote comedic one-act plays, particularly in the subgenre of 10-minute plays. Her writing was reviewed positively, and she was known for her sophisticated characters.[6] As well as writing her own plays, she worked with her husband to translate other monologues and plays from French into English.[2]

She wrote more than 20 plays,[3] including:

The Oakland Tribune called her play One Egg "a rather clever farce".[10] In 1936, she was published in a collection of One-Act plays in a 2 volume collection, The One Act Theater, along with Ethel van der Veer and her husband, Glen Hughes and published by Samuel French, Inc.[22] Her 1937 one-act-play If the Shoe Pinches was published in the 1938 anthology The Best One-Act Plays of 1937, which features work by "the best-known playwrights".[17] If the Shoe Pinches was performed in 1938 with blind actresses performing the six roles.[18]

Another of Hughes' earliest works was Christopher Morley, multi ex uno (University of Washington chapbooks, no. 12, 1928), a work based on the life and personality of American poet and novelist Christopher Morley.[23] It was published as part a series of chapbooks developed by her husband at the University of Washington.[2][3] Hughes presents different aspects of Morley as different characters in the book, which was reviewed positively in the Oakland Tribune in 1928.[24]

She wrote two mysteries about a fictional detective from Stanford University, Murder in the Zoo in 1932 and Murder in Church in 1934. In May 1935, she wrote a fictional ending to the actual George Weyerhaeuser kidnapping in a piece for the Seattle Daily Times, in which the poet Egbert Lobe rescues the nine-year-old boy.[3]

Hughes' 1946 semi-autobiographical novel Last Night When We Were Young features a character named Julie who experiences similar things to the author.[3] Kenneth Horan, writing for the Chicago Tribune on February 22, 1948, said in a review of the book, "There is sufficient talent in Miss Hughes' charming head to write any number of novels. But she seems to be in a hurry. She glosses over incidents with the wide broad sweep of a scythe, and she rushes headlong into the great moments of reconciliation or regret or accomplishment, without waiting to explain. But her writing has a quality of entertainment and for that, all else is forgiven".[25] The book was followed the next year by Magic Penny, which was also about a playwright in a relationship with a much younger woman.[26]

She also wrote a non-fiction book based on her work in public relations, The right angles; how to do successful publicity (New York: Ives Washburn, 1965).[27]