a scandal among the local people. She is attacked by the Ku Klux Klan in an attempt to scare her away. She instead frames the Klan, and uses the media attention to start a movie career. The plot about a white woman subverting the Klan was unique for an African-American female writer in the Harlem Renaissance, as black women of that era wrote mostly about black folk life. Spence crossed racial barriers when she approached the white author to secure publishing rights, and by hiring a white agent, Audrey Wood, who also represented Tennessee Williams. Spence cast Queenie Smith, a popular Broadway actress in the 1920s, in the lead role for the play, which was scheduled to open at the Empress Theatre in Danbury, Connecticut in 1933. The production was canceled without explanation four days before it was to open, and a disheartened Spence optioned the screenplay to Paramount Pictures for $5000.00. Although her play never reached the stage, it remains significant because it represents one of the earliest attempts to enter commercial theater by an African-American writer. According to some sources her screenplay was never made into a film, but in a 1973 interview Spence revealed that her screenplay was filmed as Ready for Love, a 1934 film starring Ida Lupino and Richard Arlen and directed by Marion Gering. The discrepancy is likely due to the fact that she was not listed in the film credits. Writing style Eulalie Spence developed a sensitivity towards race and gender from memories of her parents' struggles as black immigrants. Spence's plays were mostly comedies, although she did write three dramatic works: Her, Undertow, and La Davina Pastora. Spence wrote "folk plays", which tended to focus on the everyday lives of African-Americans, particularly domestic life, shunning Du Bois' belief that the black theater should be used for propaganda, or "race plays." Her plays often included a love triangle, with weak male characters contrasting against the strong personalities of the female characters. Although Spence said that this contrast was likely from her experiences at home with a quiet, soft-spoken father who left all the decisions to his wife, the differences between her male and female characters was unintentional. In a 1924 review, writer George S. Schuyler criticized Spence's play On Being Forty for its inability to connect with the audience and for having characters that were "not true to Negro life." The review of