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 Big House (1930), considered to be his masterpiece. He was found dead in his beach house in 1934, victim of an apparent suicide.