Known as "The Dean of Serial Writers," Smith was a writer from
Maassachusetts who got his start working as an office boy in a Boston
advertising agency. By 1915, Smith was looking for work with a better
paycheck and his friend George B. Seitz placed him in the title
department at Pathe where he wrote subtitles. The first serial he wrote
was Bound and Gagged (1919), in which Seitz starred.