[2] In the summer of 1926, Turney started working at the Pasadena Playhouse's School of Theatre, where she helped Gilmore Brown prepare for the premiere of Eugene O'Neill's Lazarus Laughed.
[2][3] In the 1930s, she had early success in theater with her plays Bitter Harvest (1936), performed in London, and due to the work's positive reviews and thinking she was English and not American, she was offered a job from MGM.
[4][5][6][7] She then worked on the film The Bride Wore Red (1937) which was an adaptation of Ferenc Molnár's unproduced play, The Girl from Trieste, which was later handed to another screenwriter, Joe Mankiewicz.
"[4] After Bitter Harvest and her experience at MGM, she returned to playwriting and penned My Dear Children (1939), her greatest stage success, which was performed on Broadway and starring John Barrymore.
[4] She became known for writing for some of the biggest stars of the time, such as Rosalind Russell, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck among others.
[11] Turney wrote for television from the late 1950s to the early 1960s for shows including: Maverick, General Hospital, Alcoa Presents, and The Wonderful World of Disney.