The younger daughter of Francis "Frank" Marion Dee and his wife, the former Henriette Putnam, Frances Marion Dee was born in Los Angeles, California, where her father was working as a civil-service examiner.[1][2]
She grew up in Chicago, Illinois, where she attended Shakespeare Grammar School and Hyde Park High School, where she went by the nickname of Frankie Dee.
After graduating from Hyde Park High in 1927, of which she was vice president of her senior class, as well as voted Belle of the Year,