[4] She had hoped to study art, but in 1933 she won a beauty contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures that led to her career in Hollywood.

Lawson's Princess Aura was domineering, independent, voluptuous, conniving, sly, ambitious, and determined to make Gordon her own.

This ambition was somewhat restricted by studio policy: she was then under contract to Universal, which then specialized in low-budget action and western fare and seldom made big-budget productions.

The actress, accustomed to the fast-paced production of serials, discovered that working in feature films was tedious, with repeated takes of dialogue scenes.

[citation needed] Rogers left Universal for 20th Century-Fox in 1938, where she appeared steadily in the studio's lower-budget product,[citation needed] including its popular series films featuring Michael Shayne (The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, 1940), The Cisco Kid (Viva Cisco Kid, 1940), and Charlie Chan (Charlie Chan in Panama, 1940).

The only major motion picture Jean Rogers appeared in at Fox was the Tyrone Power feature Brigham Young; it was a supporting role and she was billed eighth.

After a promising start with Design for Scandal (1941) with Rosalind Russell and Walter Pidgeon, she found herself getting "B" assignments exclusively, like Whistling in Brooklyn (1943) with Red Skelton and A Stranger in Town (1943) with Frank Morgan.

[citation needed] Rogers was a lifelong Democrat who supported Adlai Stevenson's campaign during the 1952 presidential election.