Born in 1926, she was the eldest of seven children, and began work at an early age to support the family. She owed her sultry looks to her Spanish father, an amateur accordionist who also played piano in several Liverpool nightclubs. At the age of twelve she saw an advertisment in the local newspapers for juvenile dancers and passed the audition. By sixteen [at the hight of the Nazi Blitz-bombing raids on Liverpool she answered another advert, when she managed to secure a job as a singer in the "New Yorker" - a Southport, Merseyside club.

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