It took her little time to make the grade. She became a "Follies" girl. Ziegfeld featured her as one of his most beautiful. Then started the hectic career that to Broadwayites made the name "Hilda Ferguson" symbolize an era. Hilda came to Broadway in 1921, shortly after the beginning of Prohibition. Churchill's, Rectors, Reisenweber's, Bustanoby's, the Café de Paris, were fresh, green memories. The speakeasies were getting going. The first of the bootleggers, later to inspire a bloody generation of crime, were feeling their way in wholesale law violation. In this changing world, the girl decided to cast her lot. Her tinseled career, running a parallel course with Prohibition, came to an end on a hospital cot two months and two days before Repeal. During her short lifetime, Hilda went the pace with men and liquor. Young millionaires and old ones, powerful figures of the underworld and of politics were on the roster of her admirers. Her life reads like a history of America's crazy years. She was a flat-mate of Dot King when the mysterious slaying of that youngster, kept by a Philadelphia financier, rocked Manhattan. Hilda, questioned by police, denied she knew a thing about it. She was engaged to Aaron Benesch, multi-millionaire Baltimore furniture king, only to lose him to Helen Henderson, another glamorous show girl. She was the sweetheart of Enoch (Nucky) Johnson, Atlantic City overlord, and was featured by him in an elaborate show in Atlantic City's Silver Slipper, a night club he bought for the sole purpose of providing a stage for his current reigning favorite. He gave her a $12,000 mink coat and a Rolls-Royce. They lived in half the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton. She lost him to Kitty Ray, who claimed she was the ex-wife of Macoco, millionaire playboy of the Pampas, though he denied they ever wed. Arthur Hammerstein was one of her most ardent admirers. Then it was rumored Hilda would marry Howard Lee, rich society scion. She was questioned by police when "Tough Willie" McCabe, ex-bodyguard of Arnold Rothstein, was cut up in the "61 Club" stabbings. To General Sessions Judge Freschi, she exclaimed: "My dear, I was in the ladies' room." The judge replied: "It's very nice to be called 'my dear.' I don't know whether I like it or not." He held her in $5,000 bail. She spent the night in Harlem Prison until she was bailed out the next day by "Feets" Edson, another colorful Broadway mobster. "I put up the bail," Edson said, "because she used to work for me." Hilda had appeared in the Club Abbey, another resort of pungent Broadway memory, where Larry Fay was later killed. She had refused to talk after Dot King was slain. She kept mum when police grilled her about Willie McCabe. Broadway said: "Hilda knows how to keep her mouth shut." So she forfeited the $5,000 bail for failing to appear.