Dorothy Cooper

Dorothy Cooper (née Wright) was an award-winning American screenwriter and TV writer active in the 1940s through the 1970s.

Biography

Dorothy was born in Vermillion, South Dakota, to Harry Wright and Jessie Christy. After high school, she attended the University of South Dakota, where she majored in journalism and edited the school's humor magazine, The Wet Hen.

In 1933, after graduation, she moved to Los Angeles, where she got a job working as a telephone operator in Universal City. Four years later, after writing a letter to producer Van Paul, she was offered a job as an extra and then as an assistant script editor. In 1948, she broke into screenwriting with On an Island with You and A Date with Judy.

In the 1950s, she began writing for television; she ended up writing more than 30 episodes of Father Knows Best and 20 episodes of My Three Sons. She also wrote scripts for The Bill Cosby Show and Gidget, among others. She won two Emmys for her work in the medium.

She retired sometime during the 1970s, and died in Palm Desert, California, in 2004.

She was married three times: first to G. Leslie Cooper, second to Paul Cerf, and third to Robert Foote.

Selected works

TV

• The Bill Cosby Show (1970) (2 episodes)
• The Flying Nun (1967–1969) (4 episodes)
• My Three Sons (1960–1969) (23 episodes)
• The Doris Day Show (1968) (1 episode)
• Love on a Rooftop (1967) (2 episodes)
• Family Affair (1967) (1 episode)
• Gidget (1965–1966) (2 episodes)
• Tammy (1965) (1 episode)
• Hazel (1963–1964) (3 episodes)
• Father Knows Best (1958–1960) (31 episodes)
• The 20th-Century Fox Hour (1 episode)
• Studio 57 (1956) (1 episode)
• The Ford Television Theatre (1954) (1 episode)

Film

• Flood Tide (1958)
• Let's Be Happy (1957)
• Small Town Girl (1953)
• Rich, Young and Pretty (1951)
• Duchess of Idaho (1950)
• A Date with Judy (1948)
• On an Island with You (1948)