[2] Her best known work was the play The Poor Little Rich Girl, which was produced by her husband in 1913[3] and went on to be made as films for Mary Pickford in 1917 and for Shirley Temple in 1936.

While she was an infant her family moved to the Jim River Valley of South Dakota where they ran a cattle ranch.

Gates married another playwright, Richard Walton Tully, in 1901 after they had both completed their studies at the University of California, in Berkeley.

[8] Before Gates's divorce had been finalized, she married another divorcé, the novelist Frederick Ferdinand Moore, in Paterson, New Jersey, in October 1914.

[4] Gates was struck down near her home by an automobile and died on 7 March 1951 in Los Angeles County General Hospital.