She appeared regularly in several radio series, including Young Doctor Malone, 1939–1940; Cavalcade of America, 1940–1941; Nicolette Moore in One Man's Family, 1947–1950; and The Great Gildersleeve, 1949–1952.

She played Sadie Grimes in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode titled "The Right Kind of House," which first aired March 9, 1958, and Mrs. Edith in "Coming Home" June 13, 1961.

She guest starred as "Sister Mary Paul", a nun fooled into hiding an injured killer, in the 1961 S3Ep24 episode "The Good & The Bad" in CBS's Bat Masterson.

She then portrayed Janet Picard in the episode "Woman in the River" of the ABC/Warner Brothers detective series Bourbon Street Beat, starring Andrew Duggan.

On April 27, 1962, she appeared in the episode "A Book of Faces" on another ABC crime drama, Target: The Corruptors!, starring Stephen McNally and Robert Harland.

In 1963, Nolan was cast as Mrs. Mertens in the episode "Reformation of Willie" of the ABC drama series, Going My Way, starring Gene Kelly as a Roman Catholic priest in New York City.

Nolan played the role of witches in two of Rod Serling's anthology television series: The Twilight Zone, in the episode "Jess-Belle" with Anne Francis; and the Night Gallery segment "Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay" opposite James Farentino and Michele Lee.

[6] In 1968, Nolan was cast in the episode "All in a Day's Work" on the NBC police drama Ironside, playing a mother who has lost her only child who was shot after a robbery.

She first played Kaye Ballard's grandmother Gabriela Balotta, who always fainted when she didn't get her way; and then secondly as Annie MacTaggart, a Scottish nanny hired to take care of newborn twins of the younger couple, Jerry and Suzie Buell.

In 1974, she starred briefly with Dack Rambo in CBS's Dirty Sally, a spinoff of Gunsmoke, on which she had played a recurring guest role for three episodes.

In 1985, she played Alma Lindstrom, Rose Nylund's adoptive mother, in the ninth episode of the first season of the hit NBC sitcom The Golden Girls.

They appeared in a 1969 KCET television reading of Norman Corwin's 1938 radio play The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, with McIntire as the Devil and Nolan as Lucrezia Borgia.

They guest-starred on screen together, often portraying a married couple, as in an episode of The Love Boat in 1978, Charlie's Angels in 1979, The Incredible Hulk in 1980, Goliath Awaits in 1981, Quincy, M.E.