She was born Karen Xandra Gaylord on January 4, 1921, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a working class family (she was also the oldest sibling out of a family that had four children; all of which were girls). Her father was employed as an engineer with the Northern Pacific Railway. Following her 1939 graduation from North Community High School she had intentions of going to college to study music and art however a school friend of her's noticed an announcement in the then published magazine, Movie Mirror, saying that the studios in California were accepting photographs with names and addresses in order to help recruit 'fresh' faces for films. Unknown, to Karen, her friend mailed in her picture and not long after she recieved a letter informing her that she had been selected to come to California for screen testing.