She attended St. Margaret's School in Waterbury, and was also educated in France, where she studied dramatics under Sarah Bernhardt.

[1] She made her Broadway stage debut in 1926, in a comedy melodrama called Wooden Kimono, and continued to perform there even after she retired from films.

[2] Her style of "brittle comedy" was seen in plays like June Moon (1929) by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner and Once in a Lifetime (1930) by Kaufman and Moss Hart.

[2] Dixon made her screen debut in 1929 in The Lady Lies and appeared in 11 other films, including My Man Godfrey, before her final studio film, Holiday (1938), which starred Edward Everett Horton, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

[citation needed] In January 1936, Dixon eloped with Edward Stevenson Ely; they were married in Yuma, Arizona.