The daughter of silent-screen star
Alma Hanlon and Broadway writer/press agent
Walter Kingsley, Dorothy Kingsley began her career as an uncredited gag
writer for the
Bob Hope Radio Show and,
later, the
Edgar Bergen Radio Show.
Producer
Arthur Freed put her under
contract to MGM; her first assignment was polishing the Garland-Rooney
musical
Girl Crazy (1943). She later
wrote a number of scripts for
Debbie Reynolds and 'Esther
Williams (I)'. After leaving Hollywood for Carmel, California,
she and her husband William Durney started the Durney Vineyard brand
winery.