- Keeler walked out on the play "Hold on to Your Hat" when husband Al Jolson persisted in making ad-lib references to their marital difficulties during rehearsals.
- Keeler, who was Catholic of mostly Irish descent and husband Al Jolson, who was Jewish, could not conceive a child, so they adopted a baby boy who was half-Irish and half-Jewish. After she divorced Jolson, she had four children with her second husband. Her adopted son, Al Jolson Jr., was a contented member of her new family. He later changed his name to Peter.
- When she was a chorus girl in New York City, Ruby was looked after and protected by a gangster named Johnny Irish. An associate of speakeasy owner and bootlegger Owney Madden, who owned the world-famous Cotton Club in Harlem, and an ally of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz, Irish ran Schultz's nightspots for him. Irish reportedly had no romantic interest in Keeler himself but watched over her because she was very young, somewhat naive and also of Irish descent, like himself. When Al Jolson decided to marry Keeler, he went to Irish to tell him of his intentions. Irish allegedly warned Jolson that if he ever mistreated her he would pay for the transgression with his life.
- Received a standing ovation at The 51st Annual Academy Awards (1979) when she appeared to co-present the Oscar for the Best Song. She was overwhelmed with emotion.
- Although she had been married to Al Jolson she forbade the use of her name in the film of Jolson's life, The Jolson Story (1946). Portrayed in that film by Evelyn Keyes, Keeler is referred to as "Julie Benson.".
- Keeler began appearing as a singer and dancer in nightclubs when she was around 14 years old, after dropping out of the sixth grade at Catholic school. She would work at two or three clubs a night, making a minimum of $150 a week. Her iceman father had costly medical problems, and she became her family's breadwinner.
- She returned to Broadway in 1971, starring in "No No, Nanette", appearing in a run of 861 performances. Her fellow dancer from fifty or so years earlier, Patsy Kelly, was also in the cast.
- Broadway columnist Mark Hellinger, later to become a movie producer, accompanied Keeler and Al Jolson on their honeymoon, to chronicle the event for the local tabloid, the New York Daily News.
- When 40-year-old Al Jolson, her future husband, first met her at Texas Guinan's El Fey Club in New York City one night in 1926, she was a 16-year-old dancer in the chorus line. He married her two years later, when she was 18.
- In her heyday, with carefully counted slow motion, she was declared the world's fastest "tapper".
- When she enrolled in Jack Blue's dancing school on West 54th Street in Manhattan at eleven, one of her classmates was Patsy Kelly.
- Was paired with Dick Powell in seven films at Warner Brothers: 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), Dames (1934), Flirtation Walk (1934), Shipmates Forever (1935), and Colleen (1936).
- The eldest of three daughters of Nova Scotian emigrants Ralph Hector Keeler and Eleanora "Nellie" Lahey, Ruby Keeler's parents were poor but managed to pay for her dancing lessons. Ruby was the elder sister of Gertrude Keeler and Helen Keeler and the aunt of child actors Joey D. Vieira and Ken Weatherwax (the latter best-known for playing "Pugsley Addams" in The Addams Family (1964)).
- Got into a chorus line of a Broadway show at 14 and then danced in nightclubs, speakeasies and on stage.
- Keeler ended her RKO contract when the studio billed Anne Shirley over her in "Mother Carey's Chickens".
- She has appeared in three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Sullivan's Travels (1941), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and Footlight Parade (1933).
- A street in Burbank, California is named for her.
- Inducted into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2019.
- Born on August 25, 1909, the exact same date as Michael Rennie.
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