[2] Gardella's first performance in the legitimate theater was in the 1921 version of George White's Scandals.

The show featured an African-American chorus and cast, including Jules Bledsoe (in the role of Joe) who made "Ol' Man River" an American classic.

[2] During the 1930s, Gardella appeared in occasional movie shorts filmed in New York, including the Vitaphone series Rambling 'Round Radio Row (1932–34).

In 1938, the Vitaphone studio starred her as "Tess Gardella (Aunt Jemima)" in the two-reel musical short A Swing Opera.

In this updated condensation of the famous operetta The Bohemian Girl, with special lyrics by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, Gardella was top-billed as the gypsy queen and does not wear blackface.