At the age of 12, Porter arrived at Hollywood and took dancing lessons at the Fanchon and Marco dancing school, where she was discovered by Director Allan Dwan. Porter acted in Dwan's 1936 musical Song and Dance Man, but did not appear in the credits.
Beginning with a bit parts in movies such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and One Million B.C. (1940), she eventually established herself as an Actress for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941.
While never a big star, she was active throughout the 1940s, appearing in almost 30 motion pictures alongside MGM stars like Esther Williams, Mickey Rooney and the comedy duo Abbott & Costello. In the 1950s, Porter appeared mainly in television series such as The Red Skelton Show, Sea Hunt, and 77 Sunset Strip. She retired from acting in 1961. Porter was loaned out to RKO to act in Till the End of Time.
She was married to film Director and Writer Edward Dmytryk, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, the most prominent blacklisted group in the film industry during the McCarthy-era. The two married May 12, 1948, in Ellicott City, Maryland. They had three children. Dmytryk was blacklisted because he refused to respond to allegations of communism. In the late 1940s, Porter and Dmytryk escaped to England. After they returned to the U.S. in 1951, Dmytryk was imprisoned for six months for contempt of Congress.
Porter died in Canoga Park, California, on January 13, 2018 of natural causes, at the age of 95.
