He had a featured role in director Frank Capra's The Younger Generation (Columbia, 1929), a tale of a Jewish family that moves to a more up-scale neighborhood.

He successfully made the transition to talkies, and starred in melodramas, action flicks, old dark house mysteries, and comedies, as well as a couple of Western serials and about a dozen low-budget sagebrush yarns and outdoor adventures.

He was Hoot Gibson's brother in Cavalcade of the West (Walter Futter Prod., 1936); Lease played the "Pecos Kid" in McCoy's Lightnin' Bill Carson (Puritan, 1936); played Col. William B. Travis in Heroes of the Alamo and he worked in a couple of Tom Tyler's, Ridin' On (Reliable, 1936) and Fast Bullets (Reliable, 1936).

Though no longer afforded star billing, he continued in smaller roles into the 1950s in films (recurring as the sheriff in four Ma and Pa Kettle movies) and on TV.

On January 3, 1966, Lease was found dead by his son Richard on the kitchen floor at his Van Nuys, California, home.