[3] At age 16, Lang was a dancer at a vaudeville theater in Los Angeles when she left that job to seek work at the Fox Film studio.
[5] Early in Lang's career, she was a blonde when she worked for Fox Film, averaging "about one good role a year" and spending more time posing for publicity photographs while wearing a bathing suit.
[4] An encounter with producer Darryl F. Zanuck at the Trocadero night club led to her being cast as the romantic lead in Captain January (1936) for the new 20th Century Fox.
[4] She soon graduated to leading roles, most notably in Bonnie Scotland (with Laurel and Hardy, 1935), in The Road to Glory (with Fredric March, Warner Baxter and Lionel Barrymore—written in part by William Faulkner—1936), and as Joyce Williams in Wee Willie Winkie (directed by John Ford, with Shirley Temple, Cesar Romero, and Victor McLaglen, 1937).
[7] Her reputation as a wholesome leading lady was somewhat tarnished when she married Johnny Roselli, a Chicago connected mobster who helped control Hollywood movie unions, on April 1, 1939.