Born in Memphis, Tennessee, 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. Things did not work out as Lang hoped and he eventually returned home and to the film business.

In 1926, Walter Lang directed his first silent film, The Red Kimona. In the mid 1930s, he was hired by 20th Century Fox where, as a director, he "painted" a number of the spectacular colorful musicals for which Fox Studios became famous for producing during the 1940s. One of Lang's most recognized films is his 1956 epic The King and I for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Directing.

Walter Lang died in 1972 in Palm Springs, California and was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Walter Lang has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6520 Hollywood Blvd.