During his career, Thunder worked for Paramount, Gotham Pictures, and Fox Film Corporation; and he shared screen time with Clara Bow, Dorothy Dalton, William Russell, Caryl Lincoln, and other prominent actors of the period.

[10] A survey of cast listings from that decade reveals that at least 14 dogs performed in leading roles in motion pictures, and German Shepherds accounted for 12 of that number, including Thunder.

[10] Thunder's screen debut was in the now-lost 1923 Paramount drama The Law of the Lawless starring Dorothy Dalton and French actor Charles de Rochefort.

[15] Beneva became involved in The Law of the Lawless when the film's director, Victor Fleming, needed a "'wolf dog'" for a small part, and he asked Davis to provide a suitable animal.

As originally scripted, Beneva's minor role was to require his presence on set for only two days; the expanded part kept the dog working the full six weeks of the film's production.

[7] After Beneva's uncredited performance in The Law of the Lawless, Gotham Pictures cast him to star in its 1924 feature Black Lightning with the new screen name "Thunder the Marvel Dog".

The film received generally high marks in trade publication reviews; but, more importantly, the vast majority of theater owners and audiences enjoyed Thunder's performance.

The plot of Black Lighting includes scenes of Thunder saving a wounded soldier "from the firing line" at the Battle of Verdun in France during World War I.

[20] To help promote the new dog hero, Gotham and some media outlets freely incorporated the war-related elements of Black Lightning into Thunder's own biography and fabricated tales of his duties and heroism at the real battle.

[21] Since Thunder's pedigree records show that his birth occurred nearly three years after the war ended, any allusions to such "feats" in that issue or in any other period publication are indeed fraudulent.

"[22] The publication then highlights a few of Thunder's action sequences in the film: "Among some of his best stunts are the successful tracking down of a lost child, rescuing a tiny girl at the edge of a cliff, the scene in which he grabs and halts a runaway horse on the saddle of which the heroine is helplessly clinging; and a terribly realistic fight he engages in with the half-cast villain.

Known as "White Fawn" and also owned and trained by Davis, her addition intended to enhance Thunder's personal story by imitating the earlier on-screen pairing of his film rival Strongheart with a "wife, Lady Jule", in the 1924 production The Love Master.

After he presented Wolf Fangs in his theater in Louisville, Nebraska in 1928, Frank Johnson reported in the Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World that the Fox drama, while "suitable", had "Just a bit too much dog and not enough human acting".

[34] With further regard to Davis, he remained active in the canine world for decades, also producing radio programs with dog-related themes and serving as a judge in many regional and national breed shows.