14 Facts About Dorothy Kingsley

Dorothy Kingsley was an American screenwriter, who worked extensively in film, radio, and television.

Dorothy Kingsley 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.

Dorothy 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.

Bennett thought that Dorothy Kingsley's material was better than her current supply, and used a couple of her gags on her radio program.

Dorothy 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 Dorothy Kingsley stayed with them for several years.

Dorothy 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.

Dorothy Kingsley often worked without credit; and though hers was usually a co-credit, she normally worked alone, before or after the other screenwriters had finished up.

Dorothy Kingsley wrote many of the great MGM musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, as well as a number of scripts for Debbie Reynolds and three quarters of all the Esther Williams pictures.

In 1948, Kingsley and fellow screenwriter Dorothy Cooper wrote A Date with Judy, which was a pivotal film for Elizabeth Taylor, who, after playing frail juvenile roles, was given the part of a manipulative modern flirt who saw a school campus as merely husband-hunting grounds.

Dorothy Kingsley was the last of the writers to work on the script for Stanley Donen's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers after Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.

Sinatra was so pleased with what Dorothy Kingsley had done with Pal Joey, he committed to Can-Can without a script.

Dorothy Kingsley died of heart failure in 1997 in Monterey, California.

Dorothy Kingsley is buried in San Carlos Cemetery in Monterey, California.