a young age. Her early dance training, however, did lead her always to consider herself a tap dancer first and foremost. Contrary to popular misinformation from an undying rumor, she was never a regular or recurring guest of the Our Gang series; she did, however, appear as an extra one single time, a guest among many other children in a party scene. Fabray's parents divorced when she was nine, but they continued living together for financial reasons. During the Great Depression, her mother turned their home into a boarding house, which Fabray and her siblings helped run, Nanette's main job being ironing clothes. In her early teenage years, Fabray attended the Max Reinhardt School of the Theatre on a scholarship. She then attended Hollywood High School, participating in the drama program with a favorite teacher, where she graduated in 1939. She beat out classmate Alexis Smith for the lead in the school play her senior year. Fabray entered Los Angeles Junior College in the fall of 1939, but did not do well and withdrew a few months later. She had always had difficulty in school due to an undiagnosed hearing impairment, which made learning difficult. She eventually was diagnosed with a conductive hearing loss (due to congenital, progressive otosclerosis) in her twenties after an acting teacher encouraged her to get her hearing tested. Fabray said of the experience, "It was a revelation to me. All these years I had thought I was stupid, but in reality, I just had a hearing problem." Fabray gave many interviews over the years and much of the information known about her was revealed in these conversations. In 2004, she was interviewed for posterity in the oral history Archives of American Television as an Emmy TV legend. Career Theatre At the age of 19, Fabray made her feature film debut as one of Bette Davis's ladies-in-waiting in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). She appeared in two additional movies that year for Warner Bros., The Monroe Doctrine (short) and A Child Is Born, but was not signed to a long-term studio contract. She next appeared in the stage production Meet the People in Los Angeles in 1940, which then toured the United States in 1940–1941. In the show, she sang the opera aria "Caro nome" from Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto while tap dancing. During the show's New York run, Fabray was invited to perform