She told Sugar Ray Robinson on Tattletales (6-13-1975) that she was a descendant of boxer John L. Sullivan.
She appeared on Broadway with Sammy Davis Jr. in a show called "Golden Boy." She was an understudy who finally, nerve-rattlingly got the call one afternoon when the lead actress fell ill and she had to go on.
While working as a singer and dancer at the Tropicana in Las Vegas in the 1950s, she watched a planned detonation of an atomic bomb in the desert.