[10] Writing in The New Yorker, reviewing the Miller and Lyles musical, Keep Shufflin', a young Charles Brackett alerted readers: With a style sometimes likened to that of her contemporary, Josephine Baker,[12] Yarbo was embraced by audiences and critics alike, beginning in the late 1920s and continuing until her 1936 screen debut.

[24][25] Indeed, even prior to 1938, the then-as-yet thoroughly anonymous Yarbo—as Claire Trevor's maid in Alfred Werker's much-rewritten Big Town Girl[26]—caught the eye of one discerning reviewer.

Perhaps inspired by having made, roughly two months prior, "one of her rare visits to a night spot,"[34] Yarbo, backed by Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy, performed at a benefit event staged at Club Congo (formerly Club Alabam)[35] by the Alpha Phi Alpha House Campaign Committee to "provide a much-needed housing [sic] and scholarship for 'forgotten' students.

"[36] On May 19, 1949, The California Eagle's Gertrude Gipson reported that "C. P. Johnson on along with a six-piece combo, and Billy Yarbo, who has returned to dancing, will open at the Fairbanks in Alaska around the first.

One reason why she might have desired less attention appeared in a 1928 interview which, despite its condescending tone, portrays Yarbo as someone who did not aspire to fame and who—somewhat akin to her celebrated not-quite-namesake[43]—genuinely valued her privacy.

[44][b] Having finally secured that privacy, and adroitly handled her finances,[46][47] Yarbo appears to have spent the remainder of her life in relative comfort in Seattle, Washington,[48] where she died on June 12, 1996.