Walls made an early foray into films in 1924 in a silent screen version of "Tons of Money", though he did not reprise his stage role. When the talkies arrived, Walls moved his focus away from the theatre and into cinema. He directed seventeen films between 1930 and 1938, acting in most of them. He directed his last, "Old Iron", at the end of the 1930s. In the 1930s, Walls and Lynn regularly appeared in the lists of the top ten British film stars. Walls usually outranked Lynn in the top ratings, because, in the words of the critic Jeffrey Richards, "everyone warmed to the old reprobate whereas the 'silly ass' was not to everyone's taste."