[1] Contrary to prevailing mores that viewed the theater as "wicked and no fit place for anyone's daughter," Tomkinson's parents supported her ambitions and financed her first excursion when she traveled to New York City in 1934 to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

[5] As she recounts in Les Girls (1956), she had no better luck in the English theater, often turned away because of her Canadian accent, and so she applied for a place as one of the eight Millerettes, a singing and dancing chorus troupe managed by Trixie Miller and her husband.

She made the acquaintance of a retired sweets manufacturer she refers to as "Mr. Doe" who was looking for a secretary to accompany him on a trip to Africa, where he intended to "take a look around."

However, when she arrived there, she met Albert Batchelor, a cousin of her mother's, who had set himself on taking a trip around the world by airplane.

They departed by Pan Am Clipper on 22 August 1939, and though their plans were disrupted by the outbreak of World War II, they managed to return to the U.S. on 9 November 1939.

[11] She returned to England in 1946 and worked as the secretary to Ninette de Valois, director of the Sadler's Wells Ballet Company from 1946 to 1948 and accompanied it on a tour of Eastern Europe, an experience she recounted in Dancing Attendance (1967).

"I sat in the attic for days before I could put a word on paper, but finally I started and nothing could stop me," she told reporter Sylvia Hack.