From the Pasadena Playhouse to Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Disney: The Screenwriting Journey of Catherine Turney

Though writer Catherine Turney was born (in 1906) and raised in Chicago, she and her parents moved to Pasadena in her later teens and that made all the difference.  At the age of 20, Turney began working for the School of Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse where she eventually attended.  Turney graduated in 1931 and immediately began working on a play.  Bitter Harvest, the story of the controversial relationship between Lord Byron and his sister Augusta Leigh. It marked Turney as a writer of substance with an ability to adapt classics.

Various sources claim that director Dorothy Arzner at MGM then hired Turney to adapt an unpublished novel by Ferenc Molnár' into a vehicle for Joan Crawford. In the end the The Bride Wore Red credits went to Tess Slesinger and Bradbury Foote.  It was typical in the studio system – and before the existence of the Writers Guild - for several writers to be assigned the same project and the producer would decide who received credit in the end.

As with many playwrights who gave Hollywood a try, Turney disliked this system and wrote another play.  My Dear Children (1939) ran on Broadway for several months starring John Barrymore. In 1943 Turney became a writer on contract to Warner Brothers, which sometimes further confuses credits.  In 1945 she worked on another Joan Crawford film alongside a contract writing team that included James M. Cain and William Faulkner – and only they earned the credit for Mildred Pierce.

1946 ranks as Turney’s best year as five of her screenplays made it to the screen. Among them My Reputation (1946), which starred Barbara Stanwyk became Turney’s first registered screenwriting credit.  Adapted from the novel Instruct My Sorrows by Clare Jaynes romance focused on a widow and an army major. As Turney made her way writing for all the biggest female stars of the day she wrote a challenging duel role as twins for Bette Davis to portray.  A Stolen Life (1946) was a remake of a 1939 version which was itself based on a novel by Czech writer Karel J. Beneš.  Turney followed this up also in 1946 with another blockbuster part for Davis by adaptating W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.  For her final credit that year Turney created the role of a lounge singer for Ida Lupino who was both an actress and a frequent director, though Raoul Walsh directed The Man I Love (1946).

By 1947 World War II had fully ended and the many writers who had become soldiers returned home and to their pre-war contracts with the studios so work for women began to wane.  Turney had only one credit, Cry Wolf, again for Stanwyk.  1948 brought Winter Meeting, with Bette Davis as a poet in love with a war hero in this romantic, and was followed by No Man of Her Own in 1950 which this time offered Stanwyk a challenging duel role. 

Soon many female writers found the new medium of television more open to their work and from 1950-1963 Turney racked up credits on a series of anthologies form Fireside Theatre to Cavalcade of America to Studio 57.  Her final anthology credits included The Barbara Stanwyk Show (1960) and The Magical World of Disney (1963).

Turney lived near the Huntington Library and Archives in Sierra Madre, California so she spent the late 60s and early 70s researching and writing biographies until she retired.  She died in her sleep at her home on September 9, 1998.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of women of women in screenwriting, and about the craft of screenwriting while earning your MFA from your own home, our low residency Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is currently accepting applications: https://stephens.edu/program/master-of-fine-arts-in-tv-screenwriting/