He along with his co-conspirators at Educational Pictures were responsible and helped set horrifying ways performers were treated in film before the invention of the Hays Code.

Lamont always had a tremendous rapport with juvenile performers, and Universal entrusted him with a series of musical-comedy vehicles for the studio's teenage singing star Gloria Jean.

Lamont emphasized the comic elements of the films, with Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan contributing their talents, and the teen musicals were very popular with wartime audiences.

Lamont directed a couple of 1945 films starring Yvonne de Carlo and Rod Cameron, Salome Where She Danced and Frontier Gal, which were not well known in the US but were popular with some French critics.

His Universal bosses explained their need for a good comedy director who could do the job indefinitely, and Lamont came to realize that "Abbott and Costello were my future."