Prior to her career in films and TV, she was a stage actress on and off Broadway, in Summer Stock, and many theatrical venues throughout the US. Her signature role was as Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Walter Hampden in the title role. She married Vernon (aka Clark) Tharp Chesney in 1938. The couple had a son, David, in 1947. In 1948, due to her husband's illness, the family moved from New York City to Los Angeles where she began her movie and TV career. Clark Chesney died on January 4, 1951, at the City of Hope in Duarte, California.

She appeared under her maiden name (Katharine Warren, which she spelled as shown here) in over 30 films and dozens of television programs including the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (three episodes, 1956–1957) and Bonanza (1961) and the films Jailhouse Rock (1957), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), All the King's Men (1949), and as the mother of Ensign Willie Keith in the big-budget war drama The Caine Mutiny (1954).

She also coached aspiring young talent for Universal City Studios (then Universal International) in the early to mid-60s, and taught drama to young people at Brown Gables Conservatory in Brentwood, California.

Her final television performances came on the western series Laramie between 1960 and 1963.

• Three Times the Hour (1931) as Mrs. Lawrence M. Blake
• Wednesday's Child (1934) as Kathryn Phillips
• Blind Alley (1935) as Doris Shelby
• Cyrano de Bergerac (1936) as Roxane

• Katherine Warren at the Internet Broadway Database

• Katherine Warren at IMDb