[1] Priscilla Mullican was born on June 12, 1915, in Indianola, Iowa,[2] a small college town south of Des Moines.

The family owned a large house with 22 rooms, some of which they rented to students attending nearby Simpson College.

Priscilla, then 15, performed on stage as part of the entertainment accompanying the release of her sister Lola's Hollywood movie Good News (1930).

At this time, talent agent Al Altman saw Priscilla performing in one of Fagen's school plays and invited her to screentest for MGM.

Priscilla wrote to a friend in Indianola, "Leota accompanied me to a sort of theater in a New York skyscraper.

Cora immediately went to work pushing her two young daughters into attending auditions for various prospective Broadway productions, without success.

During a tryout at a music publishing office, orchestra leader and radio personality Fred Waring heard them harmonizing.

Rosemary sang the ballads, while Priscilla performed the swing numbers and wisecracked with Waring and various guests.

In 1937, Waring was engaged by Warner Bros. in Hollywood to appear with his entire band in Varsity Show, a musical starring Dick Powell.

Rosemary shared the romantic passages with Powell, while Priscilla played a high-spirited college girl.

Warner Bros. purchased Priscilla and Rosemary's contract from Fred Waring and signed them to seven-year pacts.

This was followed by Love Honor and Behave (also 1938), another light romantic comedy with Morris, who, playing her husband, spanked her 47 times in a scene for which she declined a double, and Cowboy from Brooklyn, again teaming with Dick Powell.

The same magazine, two years later on August 22, 1942, referred to their 1940 article and once again expressed disappointment at Warners' treatment of the star.

On April 28, 1941, she was heard on Lux Radio Theater with George Brent and Gail Patrick in Wife, Husband and Friend.

She freelanced next, signing a one-picture deal with Universal Studios where she starred with Robert Cummings in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942).

While living in Van Nuys, she was offered and accepted the leading role in Fun on a Weekend (1947) for producer–director Andrew Stone, co-starring Eddie Bracken.

Lane accepted the offer of the lead role opposite Lawrence Tierney in a film noir, Bodyguard (1948), starring as Doris Brewster.

In January 1951, Cora Mullican died at the San Fernando Valley home her daughters had bought for her years earlier.

[2] Lane dated assistant director and screenwriter Oren W. Haglund, later the production manager of eleven ABC/Warner Brothers television series of the 1950s and 1960s.

Priscilla wrote in the November issue of Photoplay about how she looked forward to their marriage and would continue her career.

In early 1942, the engagement to Barry ended after she met Joseph Howard, a 27-year-old Army Air Corps lieutenant, at a dude ranch in the Mojave Desert.

By June 1951, the boom in the construction industry in New England had Lane and her family moving back to Howard's native Massachusetts.

Howard left the final decision to end her career to Lane, who later declared she never regretted her choice.

During the 1952 presidential election, she, along with her sisters, all of whom were registered as Democrats, supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson[6] Outside her family, Priscilla remained busy.