Faye Margaret Emerson was born July 8, 1917, in Elizabeth, Louisiana, the fifth child of Lawrence L. and Jean Emerson. The family moved frequently during her early years, relocating to El Paso, Texas, when she was an infant. When she was three years old, her parents separated, and Emerson went to Chicago in 1924 to live with her father and stepmother. At age ten, she moved to San Diego, California, to live with her mother, where she spent the remainder of her formative years.

She became interested in dramatics during her two years attending the Academy of San Luis Rey, a Roman Catholic convent boarding school in Oceanside, California. She went on to attend Point Loma High School and, for one year, San Diego State College. Emerson subsequently joined the St. James Repertory Theater, performing in summer stock productions in California. Emerson married her first husband, William Wallace Crawford, Jr., a naval aviator, on October 29, 1938. The couple had a son, William Wallace “Scoop” Crawford, III, in 1940.

In 1941, while appearing in a stage production of Here Today at the San Diego Municipal Theater, Emerson was spotted by a talent agent from Warner Bros. studios. She subsequently signed a contract with the studio, appearing in bit parts before having supporting roles in the western Bad Men of Missouri and the comedy-drama Nine Lives Are Not Enough (both released in 1941). She had her first starring role, as a female gangster, in the crime film Lady Gangster (1942).

Emerson continued to appear in a number of crime dramas, co-starring with Zachary Scott in three: The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Danger Signal (1945), and Guilty Bystander (1950). She co-starred with John Garfield in the film noir Nobody Lives Forever and opposite Jane Wyman in another mystery, Crime by Night. A film she made with Van Johnson in 1942, Murder in the Big House, was re-released under a new title later in the decade after Emerson began to make a name for herself in a new medium, television.

In 1943, Emerson met President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son, Colonel Elliott Roosevelt. Howard Hughes was instrumental in bringing the two together when Colonel Roosevelt visited the Hughes Aircraft Company to evaluate the proposed Hughes XF-11. Though Roosevelt was married, Emerson and he linked up, strongly urged on by the generous efforts of Hughes and his social facilitator, Johnny Meyer. Emerson later asserted that despite her doubts, Hughes urged her to advance the relationship, and she could not defy him. Emerson and Roosevelt married on December 3, 1944, at the rim of Grand Canyon, where she was filming Hotel Berlin. Hughes and Meyer provided the funding and airplanes for the wedding. When Roosevelt went back to Europe, he named his reconnaissance aircraft “My Faye”. After some months in Beverly Hills in 1945, the couple resided with Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park, New York.

By 1947, Emerson’s marriage to Roosevelt had begun to disintegrate. In late 1948, after having made her Broadway debut in The Play’s the Thing, Emerson attempted suicide on Christmas Day 1948 by slitting her wrists and was briefly hospitalized. That same year, she had transitioned to television and begun acting in various anthology series, including The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse, and Goodyear Television Playhouse. She served as host for several short-lived talk shows and musical/variety shows, including Paris Cavalcade of Fashions (1948) and The Faye Emerson Show (CBS, 1950). In January 1950, she obtained a divorce from Roosevelt in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

In 1949, Emerson began hosting The Faye Emerson Show, which, though it lasted only one season, gave her wide exposure. According to author Gabe Essoe in The Book of TV Lists, on one of the show’s segments, her low-cut gown slipped and “she exposed her ample self coast to coast.” The show was broadcast from a studio CBS built on the sixth floor of the Stork Club building. The studio, a complete replica of the Stork Club’s Cub Room, was built for The Stork Club, also seen on CBS beginning in 1950.

In 1950, Emerson married bandleader and conductor Lyle “Skitch” Henderson in Cuernavaca. After The Faye Emerson Show was cancelled, she continued in television with other talk shows, including Faye Emerson’s Wonderful Town (1951–1952), Author Meets the Critics (1952), and Faye and Skitch (1953–54), appearing in the latter with her husband. She made numerous guest appearances on various variety shows and game shows. Emerson hosted or appeared on many talk shows, usually wearing elaborate evening gowns. She was such a frequent panelist on game shows like To Tell The Truth and I’ve Got a Secret that she was known as “The First Lady of Television” (although that title was sometimes applied to others, including Ruth Lyons and Lucille Ball). During this time, Emerson was earning up to $200,000 per year.

Emerson and Henderson divorced in 1957 in Acapulco, Mexico. Former brother-in-law James Roosevelt wrote: “After an incident involving some teen-age girls, [Skitch] was dropped from Johnny Carson’s Tonight TV show, and his career went into eclipse. Emerson’s marriage to Skitch hit the skids”. However, the teen-age incident happened before Carson’s Tonight Show, which didn’t begin until 1962, and Emerson had divorced Henderson in 1957.

In 1963, Emerson made her final television appearance and formally retired from show business. She subsequently relocated to Europe, residing for a time in Switzerland and then settling in Spain in 1975. Emerson rarely returned to the United States and spent much of her time in seclusion.

Emerson died on March 9, 1983, at age 65 from stomach cancer in Deià, Majorca, Spain, where she had lived since 1975.