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A former model and stock-company ingenue, brunette Nora Lane agreed to a screen test "just for the fun of it." She landed a contract with FBO (the future RKO) and made her debut opposite cowboy star Tom Tyler in The Flying U Ranch (1927). It was the first of many oaters for Lane, whose silent career was highlighted by four fine examples of the genre starring Fred Thomson, the lanky husband of screenwriter Frances Marion. There probably would have been many more had Thomson not died suddenly at the age of 38. Instead, Lane made her Western sound debut in Lucky Larkin opposite yet another legendary cowboy star, Ken Maynard, and went on to appear in five low-budget films with Tim McCoy and with William Boyd in four "Hopalong Cassidy" oaters. By the '40s, she was reduced to playing bit parts; her October 1948 suicide was reportedly due to a lack of work.