George W. Hill
George William Hill ( born April 25, 1895 in Douglass, Kansas, † May 12 1934 in Venice, California ) was an American film director.
Life
George W. Hill began his career at the age of 13 years as an assistant on the set of DW Griffith, later worked as a cameraman and scriptwriter to work as a director in the early 1920s. After the film, Tell It to the Marines in 1927 gave Lon Chaney on the side of William Haines his greatest financial success, Hill reached the peak of his career with the advent of the talkies.
In 1930 he directed two of the most commercially successful films of the year: hell behind bars, who threw a worried glance at the intolerable conditions in the U.S. prison system and from Wallace Beery made a star as well as the resident parent, for the Marie Dressler won an Oscar. For both films his wife Frances Marion had written the screenplay. The following year, he staged with The Secret Six one of the most brutal gangster films of the decade. The film was an analysis of the corruption of police and politics and ties to organized crime. Wallace Beery had the leading role as the leader of a gang.
Shortly thereafter, Hill had a serious accident, the long-term consequences are increasingly burdened him and began to hinder his creativity. 1934, in the midst of preparations for the filming of The Good Earth, he was lifeless found in his beach house. The investigation suggested a suicide.