[3] Born and raised to a Jewish family[4] in Cleveland, Ohio, she attended Western Reserve University, where she wrote for the college's literary magazine.
[5] With her first husband, attorney Leo G. Bayer, she wrote a series of suspense novels, including Paper Chase (1942), made into the movie Dangerous Partners in 1945.
After earning a master's degree in psychiatric social work, she began to write plays, enjoying Broadway success in 1958 with Third Best Sport, a collaboration with her husband.
Their first film, the low-budget David and Lisa, for which she drew upon her psychiatric background, earned the couple Academy Award nominations for writing and direction.
Following her divorce from Perry in 1971, she wrote a roman à clef about her marriage, incorporating many of the problems she faced as a female screenwriter in Hollywood into her 1979 novel Blue Pages.