She is best known for the million selling 1961 hits "Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)" and "Norman", "James (Hold The Ladder Steady)" (1962), and "Paper Tiger" (1965).

To keep supporting herself after her divorce, she returned to the nightclub scene in California, now using the name Sue Thompson.

[2] Penny and Thompson hosted a TV show in Los Angeles together before eventually moving to Las Vegas.

[2] In 1960, Thompson signed on with Columbia Records, who renamed the singer "Taffy Thomas" and issued one non-charting single under this artist name.

In 1961, after having issued over a dozen non-charting singles in a decade-long recording career, Thompson's "Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)" became a No.

Her early-1960s hits made Thompson, then in her late-thirties but with a much younger-sounding voice, a favorite among the teenage crowd and briefly a rival to the much younger Connie Francis and Brenda Lee.

[6] Sue Thompson died at her daughter's home in Pahrump, Nevada, on September 23, 2021, at the age of 96.