Spoiler : O'Day, Anita (birth name was Anita Belle Colton) Born in Chicago, Illinois. 12/18/1919. Died 12/21/2006 of cardiac arrest in a convalescent hospital in West Los Angeles, California. She had been in declining health suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Married and divorced twice. Hip-talking, blunt and feisty O'Day was hired as a $40 a week singer by Gene Krupa in 1941. Her hit tune with Krupa group was Let Me Off Uptown was a million dollar seller, which led Down Beat magazine to name her their 1942 "New Star of the Year." She was a vocalist with Stan Kenton's band from 1944 to 1945, recording her second hit, "And Her Tears Flowed Like WIne." When she left Kenton, she became a solo singer in clubds, by 1951, she was billed as the Jezebel of Jazz.

Spoiler : Screen debut playing herself in Artistry In Rhythm (1944), and she played herself in the 1959 movie, The Gene Krupa Story. Last movie was playing Sheila Mangan in Zigzag (1970).

Spoiler : She titled her 1981 autobiography, "High Times Hard Times." The book describes her troubled life that included back-room aborations, a nervous breakdown, two failed marriages, jail time for drug possession and more than a decade-long addiction to heroin that nearly killed her in an overdose in 1966. She continued to sing into her middle 80s.