A screen vamp of the Filipino silent film era she welcomed great
success in both her native land as well as Germany and France.
Appearing in over twenty films she often specialized in portraying
sexually liberated and independent women who lived life on their own
terms. At the end of the 1940s she left films to focus on a new life in
America where she remained for over five decades in the Manhattan area
where she welcomed a new lifestyle as a well regarded socialite.
A registered Republican, she was involved in the New York chapter of "The Seniors for Reagan-Bush".
Upon her death, her remains are interred at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum in Manhattan, New York.
She had two husbands. Her first husband committed suicide in 1946 and she remarried in 1963. She gave birth to one son in 1936 and adopted two children in the mid-1970s.
She often frequented some of New York's most well known libraries, art museums, and restaurants.