Boogered door/fender edges repair?

I had a car where it looked like someone just opened the door up and slammed the edge into a wall. The edge of the door was pushed in about 1/2" from damn near the top to the bottom of the door. I was able to hammer and dolly it out to get it about 90% to where it needed to be. This is with no real body skills. I imagine someone with a little more experience with stretching metal could have gotten it near perfect with just a skim coat of filler.

Best advice I got on it was to not attempt to fix the door with 30 or 40 strikes of the hammer. Instead use about a thousand lighter strikes to slowly massage it back out to where it used to be. Was a bit time consuming but I was happy with the outcome.