Henry Blanchard became a ship's pilot on Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay, and they resided in the bayside suburb of Williamstown, in a large house called Mandalay.

[5] On 1 July 1916, aged 17, Blanchard married Lieutenant (later Captain) William Thomas Meikle (born Adelaide, South Australia 14 April 1886), an Australian Infantry Force Officer repatriated from Gallipoli following illness.

Not being successful there, she went to New York, where she joined the cast of André Charlot's London Revue of 1924, an English musical starring Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence.

While still married to Jacobson, albeit unhappily, Dorothy met Oscar Hammerstein II, whose own marriage was also unhappy.

In 1949, along with her husband and the novelists Pearl S. Buck and James A. Michener, Hammerstein was a founder of Welcome House, an organization that facilitates the adoption of children of American and Asian parents.