[2] Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, she was the youngest of 11 children of Judge Thomas Francis Patrick Noonan and his wife, Hannah Kelly, a Metropolitan Opera singer.

Only 16, she defeated 2,000 contenders in an audition for the tough girl heroine in the 1927 prizefighter movie The Patent Leather Kid.

"[5] An Associated Press news story reported: "The actress has been gaining weight steadily for the last year and although under contract to a film studio has been idle.

Her excessive weight was the cause of her lack of work, Miss O'Day said, and after other flesh reducing methods failed she decided on the surgeon's knife as the final resort.

[citation needed] O'Day has a star at 1708 Vine Street in the Motion Pictures category on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.