After the Playhouse, she got her start on Lux Radio Theatre and then with the Harry Conover Modeling Agency, where she was given her nickname "Poni". This was supposedly due to her love of horses, but in reality it was to provide her with a more memorable stage name. (In the book "Westerns Women: Interviews with 50 Leading Ladies of Movie and Television Westerns from the 1930s to the 1960s", Adams said: "I was given that name at the Harry Conover Modeling Agency. Why, I don't know!) She returned to using her real name in 1945.