Fay made four movies with her husband, country singer and actor Tex Ritter, at Monogram Pictures: Song of the Buckaroo (1938), Sundown on the Prairie (1939), Rollin' Westward (1939) and Rainbow Over the Range (1940).

In 1940, she asked Monogram to give her a different part and was loaned to MGM for a small role in The Philadelphia Story, which starred Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn.

She also appeared as a debutante in the MGM musical Lady Be Good (1941) starring Ann Sothern, Eleanor Powell, Robert Young and Lionel Barrymore.

She turned down several offers to return to movie work, including an opportunity to appear on the ABC television series The Love Boat playing the mother of real-life son, John.

However, the employee mistook this as meaning she had died, and telephoned a friend — who happened to work at the Telegraph's obituaries desk — with the supposed "news".

[5] Fay died of natural causes at the age of 88 at the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, California,[2] less than two months after the death of her son, John.