[2] With her dark, exotic looks and throbbing vocal style, Drasin was ideal casting material for European characters in musicals of the 1930s.

In Free for All, she was Marishka Tarasov; in Roberta, she was Princess Stephanie of Russian nobility; and in Right This Way and Leave It to Me!, she portrayed Frenchwomen.

Besides "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and another ballad, "The Touch of Your Hand", in Roberta, Drasin introduced three other standards: "I Can Dream, Can't I?"

As I'll Be Seeing You was becoming one of the homefront anthems of World War II, Drasin was killed while travelling as part of a United Service Organizations group that was on Pan American Boeing 314 flying boat Yankee Clipper which crashed while attempting to land on the Tagus River at Lisbon, Portugal, on 22 February 1943.

[3][4] Drasin's story was partially told in the Jane Froman film With a Song in My Heart (1952).