Actress. She is best remembered for her portrayal of the attractive Coffy Smith in "Love Laughs at Andy Hardy" (1946). After completing her public education, she became a contestant in several beauty pageants and after winning Miss Santa Barbara she began working as a professional dancer for impresario Billy Rose. Upon meeting director George Sidney while appearing in a revue at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, he was so impressed by her hourglass figure, dark good looks, and distinctive height, that he took notice of her potential and arranged for her to begin a career in the film industry beginning with her appearing under his supervision per a supporting role in "Thousands Cheer" (1943). From there, she would go on to flourish as a familiar character actress appearing in over 40 features; often typecast as wives, mothers, beauticians, secretaries, nurses, playgirls, debutantes, hat check girls, waitresses, white-collared workers, telephone operators, chorines, gold diggers, glamour dolls, exotics, alluring housekeepers, handmaidens, femme fatales, women with a past, indigenous people, neighbors, eccentrics, curmudgeons, burlesque queens, and authority figures. She appeared in such feature films as "Lady in the Dark" (1944), "Broadway Rhythm" (1944), "Two Girls and a Sailor" (1944), "The Thin Man Goes Home" (1944), "Bathing Beauty" (1944), "Here Come the Co-Eds" (1945), "Ten Cents a Dance" (1945), "Thrill of a Romance" (1945), "Nob Hill" (1945), "Lover Come Back" (1946), "On Our Merry Way" (1948), "3 Godfathers" (1948), "One Sunday Afternoon" (1948), "Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949), "Key to the City" (1950), "Wedding Yells" (1951), "Flame of Araby" (1951), "Let's Go Navy!" (1951), "Jack and the Beanstalk" (1952), "Feudin' Fools" (1952), "Limelight" (1952), "A Perilous Journey" (1953), "The High and the Mighty" (1954), "The Seven Year Itch" (1955), "Indestructible Man" (1956), "Gun Brothers" (1956), "Pardners" (1956), "Gun Brothers" (1956), "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (1956), and "Pagan Island" (1961). On television, she appeared in numerous guest spots on such syndicated sitcoms as "The Abbott and Costello Show," The Colgate Comedy Hour," "Dick Tracy," "The Buster Keaton Show," "Space Patrol," "My Little Margie," "The Rough Riders," "Room for One More," and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet". During her career, she was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, was supportive of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, had been a regular parishioner of the Episcopal church, was a member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, had been a stand-in for Angela Lansbury and Ingrid Bergman, presided on her local charters on her local charters of the American Red Cross and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, had been a model for glamour photographer Paul Hesse, was accoladed as a 1955 Deb Star, was romantically linked to such actors as Frank Sinatra and Jeff Chandler, had been the celebrity spokeswoman for Avon Cosmetics, and she was married to singer James Sterling April to June 1949, tennis player Thomas Chambers from April 1952 to April 1954, and too character actor Holly Bane (later known as Mike Ragan) from 1965 to 1995 (her first marriage ended in an annulment, her second in divorce, and her third upon Bane's death, all unions produced no children). Upon her retirement in 1966, she would go on to spend the remainder of her life being a regular attendee at autograph conventions, and was involved in charitable and religious causes, until her death from the complications of advanced age.