Although some sources give her year of birth as 1886,[1][2] her passport application indicates that she was born in Palermo, Sicily, on June 19, 1888, the daughter of a musician, Louis Patricola.

[3] The family emigrated to the United States in 1889, living first in New Orleans, where her brother Tom Patricola was born,[1] before moving to Great Falls, Montana.

She was known for singing, dancing, and playing the violin at the same time, and one reviewer wrote that she was an "exceptionally clever entertainer [with] a charming personality [and] a resonant and sweet voice.

She also appeared on stage increasingly frequently in New York City, and was praised for her style, dressing with elegance,[4] and performing with "a brilliant, magnetic energy that sets your heart to dancing and your nerves to tingling with ecstasy",[3] according to a contemporary critic in the Houston Post.

Between 1919 and 1929, she also made many recordings for the Edison, Pathe, Victor, and Vocalion labels, as well as two Home-Talkie films in which she sings and plays her violin while accompanied by Abel Baer.