[2] Against her parents' wishes, she married her first husband, the writer Edward Dahlberg, while she was only 17; that marriage would end in divorce.
[6] She returned to New York City and took a position as a librarian at Columbia University before she began working at The Brooklyn Eagle as a reporter and then became an editor at a publishing house, where she specialized in travel books.
During this trip, she ended up working in various bookstores and art shops; while on the road, she learned one of her mystery thriller scripts had sold to RKO.
[4] She met character actor Marc Lawrence while working in Hollywood; the pair were married in Las Vegas in 1942.
[7] After the 1940s, she concentrated primarily on writing television, although she did collaborate with her husband on films like 1965's Nightmare in the Sun and 1973's Pigs.