Biography

Beginning his career at age 13 as a stagehand for D.W. Griffith, George W. Hill worked his way up through cinematography and screenwriting to finally begin directing films in the early 1920s. His later films took on a stark, brutally realistic atmosphere and were renowned for their effective use of shadows in the lighting as in The Big House (1930), considered to be his masterpiece. He was found dead in his beach house in 1934, victim of an apparent suicide.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Doug Sederberg <vornoff@sonic.net>

George W. Hill (1895-1934)--not to be confused with later director George Roy Hill (1921-2002) of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) fame--was one of the ace filmmakers at mighty MGM, along with King Vidor and Tod Browning, from the mid-'20s until his death in 1934, directing such major stars as Lon Chaney and Wallace Beery. He had been assigned to tackle the very ambitious project The Good Earth (1937), from Pearl S. Buck's big novel, in 1934, but his suicide set that project back for another three years, until Sidney Franklin finally re-launched it (this time with Paul Muni and Luise Rainer in the cast). In the weeks before his death he had been severely, and possibly permanently, injured in a serious car accident, and it seems likely that contributed to his tragic decision to kill himself in his late 30s.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Prof Steven P Hill [no relation to either director], Univ. of Illinois. (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)