As a teenager, she left home to become a dancer in Hollywood, California,[2] landing roles on stage and screen, including The Orpheus Four,[3] Friendly Enemies,[4] and Spring is Upon Us.

[6] While working as a dancer and actress in Hollywood, Hansen wrote (under her maiden name Sally Finney) a column titled "Your Candid Mirror" for the Los Angeles Times.

After her early career as a dancer, Hansen took over her parents' failing cosmetics company and reinvented it as House of Hollywood in partnership with her husband and her brother.

First, at 19 years old to Eugene Gunther,[11] a man who would turn out to be a philanderer, and in 1929 Hansen filed for divorce on grounds of "excessive intoxication" and violence, including one documented incident of being "slapped across the face".

[16][17] Her grave is small and simple: A flat plaque that until 2014 was buried in mud and barely visible, located at Rose Hills Memorial Park, Whittier, Los Angeles County, California.