She expanded into acting and singing and had her first major success at 18 on the London stage in the 1916 musical revue The Bing Boys Are Here.

She spent the next several years appearing successfully on the London stage and in vaudeville productions in major European cities.

[5] She became a staple of the theatre scene in New York City into the early 1930s, often appearing in Broadway musicals that featured her singing and violinist abilities.

[6] after that, she only made a handful of appearances on Broadway, with her last show being the original production of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's Saratoga in 1960.

[citation needed] She spent several years in the early 1950s portraying Bloody Mary in the original run of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, having succeeded Juanita Hall in the role.

[8] Some of her other film credits are Kitty Foyle (1940), Out of the Fog (1941), I Married an Angel (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Palm Beach Story (1942), Uncertain Glory (1944), Devotion (1946), The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), and as Madame Darville in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951).