Britain's answer to Jean Harlow was dubbed the "Aluminum Blonde" during her peak; however, she turned into a redhead when she returned to films in the post-war years.
Married three times, she had no children.
Perhaps best remembered as the prostitute inamorata of Gypo Nolan (in that AA-winning performance by Victor McLaglen) in John Ford's The Informer (1935).
Reared and stage-trained in South Africa, this statuesque blonde appeared in several UK films of the early 1930s before going to Hollwood, where she performed in a number of films of the 1930s, '40s and '50s.
She developed a drinking problem in the early 1970s following the death of her third husband and became a recluse.
Spent her childhood in South Africa where she was educated at Ladies College Durban. She first appeared on stage there in 1926 with a touring company under Dennis Neilson-Terry and accompanied them to London the following year. She made her film debut in 1929.
The highest-paid actress in England during the 1930s, she suffered from camera fright.