[2] In 1929 in Cincinnati, she made her stage debut in the Stuart Walker stock theater company.

She entered the movies playing Richard Arlen's fiancée in Wayward (1932), but her best-remembered role is probably either as Rita Ross in Murder at the Vanities (1934), one of the last pre-Code films, in which she sang an ode to marijuana ("Sweet Marijuana"), or as Alicia Hatton, the snooty society girl in the Mae West comedy I'm No Angel (1933).

In 1937, Michael returned to the stage at the Cape Play House in Dennis, Massachusetts, with the lead in Damn Deborah.

She also made a guest appearance on Perry Mason in 1958 as Helen Rucker in "The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary".

After the relationship ended, Cain, in his novel Fast One, based the character of the alcoholic lover on Michael.