[2] Mayo was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of newspaper reporter Luke and his wife, Martha Henrietta (née Rautenstrauch) Jones.

[1] They appeared together in some short films and were a huge hit at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in the Broadway theater district, where she was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn.

[citation needed] In 1941, now officially known by her stage name Virginia Mayo, she got another career break as she appeared on Broadway with Eddie Cantor in Banjo Eyes.

[5] In the early 1940s, Virginia Mayo's talent and striking beauty came to the attention of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, who signed her to an acting contract with his company.

[2] Going against the previous stereotype, Mayo accepted the supporting role of unsympathetic gold-digger Marie Derry in William Wyler's drama The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) for Goldwyn.

In a film review in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote of Mayo, "As a comedy actress, [she] is no better than a rather weak script.

Mayo was reunited with Kaye in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), another big success, and A Song Is Born (1948), a box office disappointment.

They starred her in another film noir, Flaxy Martin (1949) with Zachary Scott, then she did a Western with Joel McCrea and director Raoul Walsh, Colorado Territory (1949), and a comedy with Ronald Reagan, The Girl from Jones Beach (1949).

Mayo received excellent reviews in another unsympathetic role, playing James Cagney's sultry and scheming wife in the gangster classic White Heat (1949), also for Walsh.

[3] Roy Del Ruth borrowed her to play opposite George Raft in Red Light (1949) and she was Milton Berle's leading lady in Always Leave Them Laughing (1949).

Mayo was top billed in the film noir Backfire (1950), and she was a huge hit in The Flame and the Arrow (1950) as Burt Lancaster's love interest.

Mayo starred opposite Dennis Morgan in David Butler's Technicolor musical, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951) which was a moderate success.

She was Alan Ladd's leading lady in The Iron Mistress (1952), a popular biopic of Jim Bowie, and starred in another musical, She's Back on Broadway (1953).

She also guest starred on shows such as Burke's Law and Daktari and appeared onstage in such plays as That Certain Girl (1967) and Barefoot in the Park (1968) with Lyle Talbot.

Mayo continued to occasionally appear on television in shows such as Police Story, Night Gallery, The Love Boat, Remington Steele, and Murder, She Wrote, and a dozen episodes of the soap opera Santa Barbara.

[11][12] A lifelong Republican, she endorsed Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and longtime friend Ronald Reagan in 1980, who many believe became the greatest president of the 20th century..[13] Mayo died of pneumonia and complications of congestive heart failure in the Los Angeles area on January 17, 2005, aged 84, at a nursing home in Thousand Oaks.