A chance meeting with director Charles Vidor led to a screen test at Columbia Pictures and a seven-year contract.

Courtland's feature debut was in Vidor's 1944 screwball comedy Together Again, before he joined the U.S. Army, serving in the Pacific Theatre of World War II.

[1] After the War, Courtland starred opposite Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, followed by appearances in more than a dozen films including The Man From Colorado (1948), Battleground (1949), The Palomino (1950), The Barefoot Mailman (1951), and Take the High Ground (1953).

Returning to California, he was frequently seen in guest roles on Westerns including The Rifleman, Death Valley Days and The Virginian.

In 1957, he starred in six episodes of ABC's Disneyland in the miniseries The Saga of Andy Burnett, the story of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, man who comes west to the Rocky Mountains.

[1] Courtland was cast as newspaperman William Byers in the 1965 episode, "The Race at Cherry Creek", on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Ronald Reagan.

Though strongly encouraged in the pursuit by his wife Elizabeth ([Nancy Rennick), Byers' pressman, Andy Kate (Alvy Moore), is pessimistic about their chances of publishing first.