Dorothy Kingsley
| Dorothy Kingsley | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
October 14, 1909 New York, New York, U.S. |
| Died | September 26, 1997 (aged 87) Monterey, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse |
first husband unknown William Durney (? – 1989) his death |
| Children | 6 |
Dorothy Kingsley (October 14, 1909 – September 26, 1997) was an American screenwriter, who worked extensively in film, radio and television.
Born in New York City, Kingsley was the daughter of newspaperman and press agent Walter J. Kingsley, and silent film actress Alma Hanlon. Following their divorce, Hanlon remarried to director Louis Myll. They lived at Bayside, Queens for two years, and later moved with Dorothy to the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
Kingsley also had an unsuccessful first marriage. As a young divorced mother of three, while recuperating from a severe case of the measles, she listened to all the radio programs and began to think that she could write better material than she was hearing. She went to Los Angeles to visit a friend and made the rounds of numerous agents with material she had written for various radio stars such as Jack Benny. Her youthful appearance worked against her, but she finally found an agent who would take a chance on her. Kingsley went home and packed up her children, but on her return to Los Angeles she found that the agent had gone out of business.
While Kingsley unsuccessfully made the rounds of agents, she happened to meet Constance Bennett socially. Bennett thought that Kingsley's material was better than her current supply, and used a couple of her gags on her radio program. Despite the size of the program's writing staff, Kingsley began supplying material gags under the table for $75 a week, but eventually the representative who was paying her for the material left and she was again unemployed. Kingsley answered a newspaper ad to write gags for Edgar Bergen, and as a result she was chosen from 400 entries for a one-month trial period at $50 a week. The Edgar Bergen show became one of the top-rated programs and Kingsley stayed with them for several years.
It was while she was with the Bergen radio show that Kingsley started submitting scripts to studios. Arthur Freed at MGM thought she had promise and wanted to put her under contract at double what Bergen was paying. Bergen was notorious for underpaying his talent and when he found out she was dismissed. Her first assignment was a production rewrite on Girl Crazy, a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musical. The current writer was otherwise occupied, so Freed asked her to go down to the set and just do a little work. Kingsley soon developed the ability to fix an ailing script during production, and while she was working on Girl Crazy, producer Jack Cummings was having a lot of trouble with Bathing Beauty and asked her to fix that as well. Many people had already worked on the ailing script whose musical numbers had been shot and had no story. It was the first picture for Esther Williams and became a big hit.
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