After seeing Foster in The Great Victor Herbert (1939), William Randolph Hearst flew her to his 67,000-acre estate for a private recital for him and his companion Marion Davies.
Foster walked out of her marriage to opera baritone Wilbur Evans, citing the reason that she was no longer in love with him. She later struggled in raising her two children and sometimes lived in dire poverty.
Her son Philip was named in honor of England's Prince Philip. In 1985 he lapsed into a hepatic coma (liver failure) on the family's living room floor and died three days later in a Los Angeles (Van Nuys) Hospital. Her surviving son, Michael eventually brought her back to the East Coast, where she spent the last years of her life living in various nursing homes. She died at age 84 at The Lillian Booth Actor's Home in Englewood, New Jersey, where she had been residing since 2003.
Never met one of her singing idols, Nelson Eddy, the whole time she was at MGM, then finally got to work with him in Phantom of the Opera (1943). Later Eddy, a sculptor, did an original bust of Susanna. He also tried to persuade her to do a concert tour with him after "Phantom", but she was still young, developed cold feet and politely declined.
Noteworthy if only for her attendance at the "great unveiling" of Claude Rains in Universal's Technicolor Phantom of the Opera (1943). She was found living in a car in 1982.
Relocating to Manhattan, she trained herself and found work as a receptionist for several Wall Street firms and an answering service operator.
She abruptly quit the film business in 1945 in order to rescue her two younger teenage sisters from their abusive alcoholic mother. She sold her mink coat and rented Jean Arthur's house for them on the Monterrey peninsula for a time.
Signed by MGM, she was handed the lead in National Velvet (1944), which she declined because there "wasn't any singing in it". This led to MGM's decision to drop her. The role went to young Elizabeth Taylor who became a star as a result.
Started her film career at MGM in 1937 when the studio had just let Deanna Durbin go. She had just gotten over a serious case of pneumonia about six months before.
Was guest soloist for the White House Press Photographer's Ball with President Harry Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in attendance.