George W. Hill

George William Hill (born April 25, 1895 in Douglass , Kansas , † May 12, 1934 in Venice , California) was an American director .

Life

George W. Hill began his career at the age of 13 as a temporary job on the set of DW Griffith , later working as a cameraman and screenwriter to direct as a director in the early 1920s . After the film Tell It to the Marines , which brought Lon Chaney alongside William Haines to his greatest financial success in 1927, Hill reached the peak of his career with the advent of the talkie .

In 1930 he made two of the most commercially successful films of the year: Hell Behind Bars , which cast a concerned look at the untenable conditions in the US penal system and made Wallace Beery a star, and The Strange Mother , for which Marie Dressler won an Oscar . His wife Frances Marion wrote the script for both films . In the following year he directed The Secret Six, one of the most brutal gangster films of the decade. The film was an analysis of police and political corruption and its links to organized crime. Wallace Beery starred as the leader of a gang.

Shortly thereafter, Hill had a serious accident, the long-term effects of which increasingly burdened him and began to hinder his creativity. In 1934, in the middle of the preparations for the filming of The Good Earth , he was found lifeless in his beach house. The investigation suggested suicide.

Filmography (selection)

• 1921: While the Devil Laughs
• 1924: The Foolish Virgin
• 1926: Fire in the East ( Tell It to the Marines )
• 1927: Jackie, the cabin boy ( buttons )
• 1928: The Cossacks ( The Cossacks )
• 1929: The Flying Fleet ( The Flying Fleet )
• 1930: Hell Behind Bars ( The Big House )
• 1930: The Strange Mother ( Min and Bill )
• 1931: The Secret Six
• 1931: Wolkenstürmer ( Hell Divers )

Web links

• George W. Hill in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Brief biography on nytimes.com