She was the only one of John Barrymore's former wives to attend his funeral in 1942.
To help Christopher Plummer prepare for a one-man show on John Barrymore
on Broadway in 1997, she showed him Barrymore's love letters.
The daughter of a traveling salesman, she claims she was first
mesmerized by John Barrymore watching him in the 1931 film Svengali (1931) and
vowed to marry him. She didn't actually meet him until 1935 at age 19
while a student at Hunter College. He was 53.
After her divorce from John Barrymore, she ran a business importing straw baskets and
handbags from Haiti.
As a Hunter College student of 19, she wrote an adoring letter to
John Barrymore, then 53 and hospitalized in Manhattan. He phoned her, they
had a pleasant talk and he invited her to visit him. There was a most
meaningful kiss in his hospital room.
She was the first of John Barrymore's four wives to use the Barrymore
name professionally, and the first to undress onstage.