Was teaching sociology at a community college when she heard that director Henry King was looking for a dialect coach for Jennifer Jones, who played a Eurasian in the 1955 film Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). The director instead hired Quo to play a small role in the film as Jones` aunt.

She earned a bachelor`s degree in social welfare from the University of California at Berkeley, and earned a master`s degree in sociology at the University of Chicago.

She taught in China after World War II, and with her husband and month-old son, escaped on a U.S. destroyer just as the communists took over.