Sidney Kingsley was born Sidney Kieschner on October 22, 1906, in New York City. He graduated from high school in 1924 and attended Cornell University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1928.

Upon graduating from college, Kingsley worked as an actor with the Tremont Stock Company in the Bronx. In 1929, he moved to California, where he found work as a play reader for theater companies and as a scenario reader for Paramount Pictures. During this time, Kingsley continued to write and develop his own dramatic works. Over the course of his life, he wrote a total of nine professionally produced plays, some of which he himself directed. In 1939, he married actress Madge Evans, with whom he later cowrote several plays.

Kingsley's first Broadway play, Men in White (1933), was his most successful, earning him the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for best American play. Men in White concerns the dilemmas of a young doctor who...