Stella Mayhew was born Izetta Estelle Sadler[1] in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[2][3][4][5] and began acting as a child in Grafton, Ohio,[6] where her father was a teacher and school principal.

"But when it comes to intelligence, snap, go, and the ability to get out of a song fully three times as much as the author and composer have put into it, Miss Mayhew is to be recommended for any and all occasions.

[21] After she performed in a 1913 fundraiser for firemen's pension fund, Stella Mayhew was named Third Assistant Chief of the New Rochelle Fire Department.

Mayhew lost her house in Beechhurst, New York, and her life savings, in the stockmarket crash in 1929, and she died "penniless" in 1934, aged 59 years, in the National Vaudeville Artists' Ward at French Hospital, from sepsis after an ankle injury at the Times Square subway station.

[26][27][5] Mayhew was baptized as a Roman Catholic in her last days, and funeral arrangements were made in that tradition, with funding from the National Variety Artists Association.