In 1934, she met the director Cecil B. de Mille at a social function in St. Louis. Cecil advised her to try a movie career with which he would be of assistance. This meeting resulted in Augusta's admittance to the Twentieth-Century-Fox stock school and her entry to films.
Of German ancestry, born Augusta Jane Stoffregen, she studied at the Washington University in St. Louis, graduating in 1932. A tomboy, her nickname was 'Bobbie'.