Eunice Westmoreland was born Miami, Florida in 1914 to a mixed-race (Black and Caucasian) family although she later passed herself off as Mexican (As Una Novella) and sometimes Italian American (As Rita Novellia)

Eventually she settled on calling herself  Donna Drake, but that later changed to “Rita Rio” and then back to Donna Drake. In the 1940s, she organized an all-girl orchestra, a radical things in those days. She got ahead largely because one of her boyfriends was the truly insane New York gangster Louis “Pretty” Amberg.

After Amberg was murdered by the mob, in 1936, the police found a love note from Rio. When questioned about the note she held that she didn’t know anyone named Amberg that the man she knew was “Mr. Cohen” and that was she knew about him.

After Amberg’s death, Rita moved to LA and broke into the film business in a big way, usually cast as a Latina, Middle Easterner, American Indian, or Gypsy.

In 1944, she married Oscar and Emmy award-winning fashion designer William Travilla. They had one daughter, and remained married until her death on June 20, 1989, at the age of 74.