[2] In 1915 she went to Hollywood where she spent ten years taking bit parts in films—including, she later claimed, in The Sheik (1921) and in Blood and Sand (1922), both starring screen idol, Rudolf Valantino—and reviving her dressmaking skills.

and the extracts that appeared from it in Australian Women's Weekly, in October 1975, align with known facts about the period, and there are some inconsistencies within those two sources;[3][4] both date from her 84th year, five decades after the events took place.

[2] She played the lead in the (now lost) Australian film Hills of Hate , for director Raymond Longford, in 1926.

In the following year she was credited with art direction on the expensive Australian film For the Term of his Natural Life.

This name was chosen at random to accompany an account she wrote of observing a bullfight in Spain, while on the European tour, which she cabled to Sydney.

[6] She filed numerous reports from London for The Sun, during the 1930s, mostly her observations of social events and famous people,[7] but also touching on the developing crisis prior to the outbreak of war.

She despatched generally lighthearted pieces for the newspaper from Asia, during the period prior to Japan's entry into the war.

[2][10][11][12] After a cocktail party given in her honour, she left Sydney again, in October 1941, for a four month stint, intending to visit various Asian cities,[13] as an accredited war correspondent for the Sun.

During internment she gained a deep voice after damaging a vocal chord, and also kept a diary written on scraps of paper,[1][2] which she hid inside the sole of her shoe.

[18][19] Well-connected to both Sydney society and the show business world, her columns were based on her own activities and opinions on current events, sprinkled with gossip and chit-chat, and much name dropping.

[20] About to be retired from the Daily Mirror—she reportedly later referred to the newpaper's new owner, Rupert Murdoch, as 'a rude boy'—she moved to radio.

Market research revealed that it was her life experiences that "allowed her to transport the session into a world remote from the ordinary housewife".

In a show there, Gordon Chater parodied her as 'Little Lady Make Believe', but she happily played along, while insisting that the names that she dropped in her work were people she really knew.

[2][4][22] She lived in a flat variously described as being at Kings Cross or Potts Point, surrounded by photographs and momentos of people whom she had met over her long career.