Graduated high school at 14.
Had a love-affair with hard-boiled shorty-story writer Paul Cain, who wrote for the screen under the pseudonym Peter Ruric. After they broke up, Cain wrote about her in the only novel of his published during his lifetime, "Fast One." Both Gertrude and Cain were heavy boozers, and in the novel published several years later after they called it quits, she was the inspiration for the dipsomaniac lover, Granquist.
Played piano and violin.
Two older brothers, Arnold and Alan.