Career
Born in Brooklyn, she was raised in Scarsdale, New York for several years until the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression, and her family moved to the Bronx. She suffered from asthma. Gallagher was known for decades as a Broadway performer.
Her song and dance number with Bobby Van from that show, "You Can Dance with Any Girl", is preserved on the cast album of that revival.
She would later take on the role of Sue Smith in the Papermill Playhouse revival of the show, playing the role Keeler played a quarter century earlier. Her first starring role on Broadway came in 1953 as title character Hazel Flagg, based on the 1937 Carole Lombard movie Nothing Sacred.
The role earned her a feature photo shoot for Life magazine. Gallagher appeared in the 1977 movie Roseland opposite Christopher Walken.
An aficionada of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she appeared on a special tribute to Richard Rodgers on The Bell Telephone Hour.
In 1984, Gallagher starred in the title role of Tallulah, a musical stage biography of actress Tallulah Bankhead. She is currently a faculty member at HB Studio.
