As a young man he went to New York City where he found clerical work at a film production company.

The business piqued his artistic instincts and he began learning the various facets of filmmaking and eventually worked as an assistant director.

However, Lang also had ambitions to be a painter and left the United States for a time to join the great gathering of artists and writers in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France.

One of Lang's most recognized films is the lavish adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I (1956) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Directing.

Field, a former actress, had met and befriended Carole Lombard when they were employed as Sennett Bathing Beauties in the late 1920s.