[1] Her father led the choir and sang solos in his church, and her mother played both piano and organ.

[3] During World War II, she appeared as the pin-up girl in the March 1944 issue of Yank, the Army Weekly magazine.

[5] In the late 1940s, she had star billing in the crime drama I Love Trouble and the comedy The Fuller Brush Man (both 1948).

In 1950, Blair took the lead role of Nellie Forbush in the American touring production of the stage musical South Pacific, with more than 1,200 performances in three years.

Blair married musical arranger and conductor[16] Louis Ferdinand Busch on July 12, 1943 in Lake Arrowhead, California.

[18] Two years later, Blair wed television producer Nick Mayo, with whom she later had two children, Andrew and Amanda.

[21] On February 19, 2007, Blair died at the age of 85 at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California from complications of pneumonia.