The blonde blue-eyed ingenue and leading lady appeared in more than 50 film roles and remained a press favourite, with numerous magazine covers.

[2] By 1928, Hyams was playing starring roles, achieving success in MGM's first talkie release, Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) opposite William Haines, Lionel Barrymore, and Karl Dane.

At Fox that same year, she appeared in director Allan Dwan's now lost romantic adventure The Far Call opposite Charles Morton.She had a role as Robert Montgomery's sister in the prison drama The Big House (1930) with Chester Morris and Wallace Beery.

Hyams acted in two early 1930s horror movies, as the wise-cracking but kind-hearted circus performer Venus in Freaks (1932) and as the heroine in the Charles Laughton/Bela Lugosi film Island of Lost Souls (1932).

She also appeared in the then-controversial Jean Harlow film Red-Headed Woman (1932) and the musical comedy The Big Broadcast (1932) with Bing Crosby, George Burns, and Gracie Allen.