In 1939, she returned to California and, with her husband, the composer Ray Green, and another former Graham dancer, Gertrude Shurr, founded the San Francisco Dance Theater.

She worked with the Graham Company again from 1944 to 1952 as a guest artist, at which time she created several roles notably the Pioneering Woman in "Appalachian Spring", Attendant in "Herodiade" (1944), She of the Earth in "Dark Meadow" (1946), and Chorus in "Cave of the Heart" (1946).

That work was best explained, she felt, by T. S. Eliot's observation in Four Quartets that "At the still point of the turning world .

In the piece, dancers moved slowly amid large boxes under a turning mobile.

O'Donnell was also an important teacher who counted Robert Joffrey, Ben Vereen, Cora Cahan, and Gerald Arpino among her students.