During the 1930s, she was a prominent comedic supporting and leading actress in Hollywood films such as Gregory La Cava's Bed of Roses with Constance Bennett and Raoul Walsh's The Bowery with Wallace Beery and George Raft (both released in 1933).

[8][9][10] Upon her return to the United States with her family, Kelton was enrolled in private schools for her early formal education and for extensive training in dance, voice, and drama.

She had a memorable turn in 1933 as dance hall singer "Trixie" in The Bowery alongside Wallace Beery, George Raft, Jackie Cooper, and Fay Wray.

Kelton at one point in the film sings to a rowdy, appreciative crowd in an energetic dive, using a curious New York accent to good comedic effect, with Beery and Raft arguing afterwards over her attentions.

In Gregory LaCava's 1933 pre-Code comedy Bed of Roses, Kelton plays Minnie, a witty prostitute who is a partner in crime with Lorry, portrayed by Constance Bennett.

[18] After her appearance in the 1939 film Whispering Enemies, she redirected her career, returning again to theatre and to performing increasingly on radio and later on the rapidly expanding medium of television.

By April 1940, Pert had left California and was living in New York City again, sharing a $65-per-month apartment in Manhattan on West 55th Street with three other women, two of whom were employed as dancers in the theatre and the third as a secretary.

[19] If not a mistake in documentation, it is possible that Kelton herself, feeling the pressures to maintain a youthful profile within the image-conscious realm of entertainment, "shaved" a few years off her age when answering census questions at that time.

Her documented lack of consistent employment during the previous year may be indicative too of the professional pressures she was experiencing after her film career in Hollywood began to wane in the late 1930s.

[19] Once Kelton had resettled in New York during the early 1940s, she began to work in theatre again, and she became a familiar voice on radio as well, performing on programs such as Easy Aces, It's Always Albert, The Stu Erwin Show, and on the 1941 soap opera We Are Always Young.

[20] In his book The Forgotten Network, David Weinstein wrote Kelton remained on Cavalcade of Stars through the final season of the series (1951–1952), and suggests that it may have been because Jackie Gleason had resisted attempts at having her dropped.

)[10] The hotel catered to actors, poets, and musicians, such as Cary Grant, Orry Kelly, Rodgers and Hart, Monroe Salisbury, Sadakichi Hartmann, and later, Elizabeth Short.