Anecdotes

Was slightly cross-eyed and had to be carefully photographed.

Early on, using her real name of Virginia Jones, she played a straight woman in vaudeville for four years to a performing horse act. The "horse" was comprised of two men known as the Mayo Brothers; hence her stage name.

Was once termed "the most beautiful blonde in the world"; her beauty so impressed the Sultan of Morocco that he said seeing her was "tangible proof of the existence of God.".

She has appeared in two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Les Plus Belles Années de notre vie (1946) and L'enfer est à lui (1949).

Was Paul Newman's first on-screen leading lady, in the Biblical epic Le calice d'argent (1954).

Auditioned for the part of "Lisa Douglas" in Les arpents verts (1965) but lost out to Eva Gabor.

In the 1950s she was the celebrity spokeswoman for Christmas Seals.

Her favorite of the movies she was in was La collégienne en folie (1952). Although her vocals were always dubbed, she enjoyed doing musical pictures because she got to dance. A trained dancer since the age of three, she once danced with the St. Louis Opera when she was a teenager.

One daughter with Michael O'Shea - Catherine Mary (b. 1953)

Her vocals were always dubbed: by Louanne Hogan in La princesse et le pirate (1944), by Betty Russell in Le laitier de Brooklyn (1946), by Jeri Sullavan in Si bémol et fa dièse (1948) and by Bonnie Lou Williams in her six singing roles at WB from 1949-57.

On 8/25/18 she was honored with a day of her film work during the TCM Summer Under The Stars.

A lifelong staunch Republican, in 1963-64 she joined fellow actresses Joan Caulfield, Ruth Hussey, Yvonne De Carlo, Marie Windsor, Laraine Day, and Maidie Norman, in making appearances on behalf of US Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee for President in the campaign against US President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Buried at Valley Oaks Memorial Park, 5600 N. Lindero Canyon Rd., Westlake Village, CA. Plot Garden of Gethsemane, Plot 313, next to her husband, Michael O'Shea.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 360-361. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

Stepmother of Edward and Barbara O'Shea.

Wrote an autobiography, "The Best Years of My Life" (as told to LC Van Savage), published by BeachHouse Books, February 2002.

In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Dhia Cristiani although at the beginning of her career Rosetta Calavetta, Lydia Simoneschi and Rina Morelli also occasionally lent their voice to her.