She married four times, was estimated to have earned one million dollars from her writing, and drafted the first 1040 income tax form for the IRS.

She was homeschooled by her father, who taught English at Yale and was an editor of Harper's Weekly and the Encyclopedia Americana.

[5][6] Putnam was a prolific writer, penning romances, westerns, musical comedies and Gothic horror.

She wrote pieces for The Saturday Evening Post[7] and had a syndicated column called "I and George" that was carried in 400 newspapers.

The screenplay for the 1932 film The Mummy starring Boris Karloff was adapted from an original story by Putnam and Richard Schayer.

Hollywood made several of Putnam's stories into movies, including Graft, A Game Chicken (1922),[12] The Fourth Horseman, In Search of Arcady, Sitting Pretty, Slaves of Beauty, Two Weeks With Pay, The Beauty Prize, A Lady's Profession (1933) and Golden Harvest.

She wrote the screenplay for Democracy: The Vision Restored (1920) and the 1953 film El billetero was adapted from her story.

[13] She was the Chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Finnish Relief Fund and she wrote tracts for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.