[1][2] She grew up speaking Spanish and vacationing in Mexico, attending school in New York City.

[1] After getting a job as a secretary in Hollywood through her family's connection to Cecil B. DeMille, she began writing scripts for Marshall Neilan's company, where she became lifelong friends with Mary Pickford.

[3] At the time, newspapers reported that with the release of her first script, Bits of Life, she was the youngest scenario writer to have a produced film under her belt.

[4] After heading back to New York City, she met and married journalist Albert Rhys Williams, and the pair later lived in Soviet Russia for seven years.

She made an attempt to break back into movies, which didn't pan out as script structure had changed with the advent of talkies.