Career
Ryan had brown hair, was 5 feet, 2 inches tall, and weighed 107 pounds. A 1940 newspaper story included her in a group of actresses "whose alluring curves alone might have disqualified them from screen careers not so long ago," in the words of Travis Banton, a Hollywood stylist. Born as Katherine Elizabeth McLaughlin in Topeka, Kansas, she went to Hollywood in 1939 at the age of 18.
Sheila Ryan retired from acting in 1968.
Ryan died November 4, 1975, in the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, California from lung disease. She was 54 years old.
Their daughter Kerry Buttram-Galgano died of cancer in 2008.