Born in Brooklyn, New York, Adele Jergens’ birth date is sometimes listed as 1922. Jergens first rose to prominence in the late 1930s, when she was named “Miss World’s Fairest” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the early 1940s, she worked as a Rockette, and was named the Number One Showgirl in New York City. After a few years of working as a model and chorus girl, including being an understudy to Gypsy Rose Lee, Jergens landed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1944, with brunette Jergens becoming a blonde. At the beginning of her career she had roles in movies where she was usually cast as blonde floozies and burlesque dancers as in Down to Earth starring Rita Hayworth (1947) and The Dark Past starring William Holden (1948). She once played Marilyn Monroe’s mother in Ladies of the Chorus (1948) despite the fact that Jergens was only 9 years older than Monroe. She played an exotic dancer in Armored Car Robbery (1950) and also appeared in the movie Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951).

In 1949, while filming Treasure of Monte Cristo, a film noir set in San Francisco, she met and married co-star Glenn Langan (The Amazing Colossal Man). Their union produced one child, a son named Tracy Langan, who would later work in Hollywood behind the scenes, as a film technician. Jergens and husband Glenn Langan remained married until his death from lymphoma, on January 26, 1991, at age 73. Their only child, actor Tracy Langan, died of a brain tumor, in 2001. Adele Jergens-Langan, retired from the screen since 1956, died on November 22, 2002, from pneumonia, in her Camarillo, California home. Her death came just 4 days before her 85th birthday. Adele Jergens was buried beside her husband and son, at the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California, under the headstone marked ‘Langan’.