Contracted to Warner Brothers during her brief Hollywood tenure.
Her father died suddenly in 1929.
Her last husband was a former bodyguard to Jean Harlow. He had been a middleweight boxer.
Her pet boxer also died in the fire that killed her.
Her photograph was the first natural color photograph to be transmitted by International News Pictures from Hollywood to the East Coast.
Her widower died on May 5, 1958, in the Nebraska State Penitentiary at age 47.
Ironically, in one of Gloria Dickson's final performances, Crime Doctor's Strangest Case (1943), she played the wife of a man who habitually started accidental fires with carelessly discarded smoking materials. Two such scenes were featured in the movie. It was just two short years later she died in a house fire suspected to have been caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette.
She auditioned at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles, resulting in being cast in the lead in Seventh Heaven. She also had the leads in Smilin' Through and The Devil Passes. It was here that Warner Bros. talent scout Irving Kumin saw her perform and left her his card backstage.
She died of asphyxiation from inhalation of fumes. She was found face down in the bathroom with first and second degree burns covering her body. Police thought the flames started from an unextinguished cigarette that lit a chair on fire while Dickson was sleeping. It is thought she went to the bathroom to try to escape through the window and is estimated she waited there for an hour before dying.
She divorced her first husband due to his extramarital affairs, jealousy, controlling nature, and drinking. She resented his interference in her career.
She first married her second husband Ralph Murphy, but they had to remarry in 1941 when it was found that her divorce was not final when they originally wed.
She grew up in Idaho, but moved to Long Beach, CA in 1930.
She had an older sister, Doris.
She separated from her first husband in June, 1940.
She separated from Ralph Murphy in February 1943. She divorced him on grounds of mental cruelty.
She was a member of the Hart Players, a tent show troupe.
Stage actress.
While traveling in 1940, she stopped in Utah to see a friend, actor singer Cliff Edwards. Her husband, Perc Westmore, reported her missing and she made national newspaper headlines for several days. When she returned from her trip, a furious Dickson insisted to the press that her husband had known where she was the whole time. It was viewed in Hollywood as a publicity stunt.