Babette Hughes

Babette Hughes (1905–1982) was an American playwright of one-act plays and mystery novelist. She was born in Seattle, Washington and while an English student at the University of Washington she met the American playwright Glenn Hugheswhom she married in 1924 for around 20 years. Hughes wrote comedic one-act plays, mysteries, and non-fiction works.

Personal life She was born Helen Babette Plechner in Seattle, Washington on December 28, 1905. 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. 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.

Plays 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. As well as writing her own plays, she worked with her husband to translate other monologues and plays from French into English. No More Americans (1925) Three Players, a Fop and a Duchess (1925) Bound for Mexico (1926) Columbine in the Country (1930) Please Do Not Pick the Flowers (1931) Safety Pins First (1932) The First White Woman (1932) Too Many Cakes (1934) Daisy Won't Tell (1937) Sisters Under the Skin (1949)

The Oakland Tribune called her play One Egg "a rather clever farce". 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". If the Shoe Pinches was performed in 1938 with blind actresses performing the six roles.

Other works 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. It was published as part a series of chapbooks developed by her husband at the University of Washington.

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. The book was followed the next year by Magic Penny, which was also about a playwright in a relationship with a much younger woman.

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).