She attended Ten-Acre School and Dana Hall before going off to Wellesley; she left without a degree in order to take care of her sick mother.

The pair headed west to California for her mother's health, where Mary Alice studied shorthand, won typing awards, opened a public stenographer service, served as secretary to Christine Wetherill Stevenson, and eventually gained work at a film studio.

[1] Eventually she got the chance to work on her own screenplays and adaptations; by 1925, she had sold four scripts to First National and six more to other studios.

[2] She formed a collaboration with Arthur F. Statter, secretary of the Screen Writers Guild.

[3] In 1928, she married actor and screenwriter Pierre Gendron in Riverside, California.