Hannah Smith (philanthropist) - The 1930s

The 1930s

In the early 1930s Smith attempted a return to the USA, summering in Los Angeles. While Smith enjoyed the brio of new ideas and buzz around Hollywood, she was not ready to leave Paris. The high point of this period was probably the tennis foursome Smith called together, with George Gershwin, Arnold Schoenberg and Groucho Marx. (Marx believing until the last minute that the Schoenberg in question was his uncle, the entertainer Al Schoenberg).

Returning to Paris, Smith’s position as a patron saw her play a useful role in the mounting of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1936 exhibition, Fantastic, Dada, and Surrealism. The use of the word ”Fantastic” in the show’s title has been attributed to Smith.

Smith traveled to New York for the show’s opening. The exhibition’s rapturous reception amongst New York’s literati and the deteriorating political situation in Europe inclined Smith to return to America. She set up house in New York on West 51st Street, where she would live until her death.

In the spacious modernist apartment, she was the consummate host of soirées and culinary experiments that are said to have included among many others Max Ernst, Kurt Seligmann, Bob Motherwell, Little Richard, André Breton, Oscar Levant, Nikola Tesla, Dai Vernon, Linus Pauling, Louis Kahn, Maya Deren, John Cage, Joseph Cornell, Kurt Gödel, Nadia Boulanger Dylan Thomas, and Al Schoenberg.

In 1938, Smith famously wired Samuel Beckett in Paris while he was recuperating from a severe stabbing by the gangster pimp, Prudent. The telegram read, “STOP”.