Her family moved to Berlin when she was one year old, and to New York City in 1912, where her father became the Irving Place Theatre's general manager.

[citation needed] On Broadway, Christians played Queen Gertrude in Hamlet and Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part I, staged by director Margaret Webster.

[4] During World War II, Christians was involved in political work on behalf of refugees, rights for workers (especially in theater and film), and Russian War relief, political efforts that would bring her to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other anti-communist institutions and organizations.

[1] In 1950, the FBI's internal security division began investigating Christians, who had been identified as a "concealed communist" by a confidential informant.

[5] On October 28, 1951, aged 59, Christians died of a cerebral hemorrhage, which some attributed to the stress of being subjected to FBI surveillance and being blacklisted.