Lanfield was an American director most famous for his comedies and TV series. He began his career as a jazz musician and vaudeville entertainer. In 1926, Fox Film Corporation hired him to write gags. Four years later he made his directing debut with the film Cheer Up and Smile (1930). Soon he specialized in light, romantic comedies produced by the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation (spawn of the merger between Fox Film Corporation and 20th Century Pictures for which Lanfield also made films): Red Salute (1935), One in a Million (1936), Thin Ice (1937). His biggest commercial success was The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), a genre film atypical of his previous works, which was a film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel by the same title about the famous Sherlock Holmes.
He continued to direct comedies, and probably his most famous one is You'll Never Get Rich (1941) starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. He directed many comedies starring Bob Hope, such as: My Favorite Blonde (1942), Let's Face It (1943), Where There's Life (1947), Sorrowful Jones (1949), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). After the film Skirts Ahoy! (1952), he continued to direct TV series, such as the The Addams Family (1964). He stopped directing at the age of 69 in 1967.