 Determined "to make something out of myself", she enrolled in 1931 at the University of Southern California (USC), where she majored in merchandising. A former professor noted that she "stood out from the empty-headed, overdressed little sorority girls of that era like a good piece of literature on a shelf of cheap paperbacks." She held part-time jobs on campus, worked as a sales clerk in Bullock's-Wilshire department store, taught typing and shorthand at a high school, and supplemented her income by working as an extra in the film industry. She appeared as part of a brief walk-on in the 1935 film Becky Sharp, as well as the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.
