George Roy Hill

George Roy Hill, born December 20, 1921, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and died December 27, 2002, was an American director whose career spanned Broadway, television, and Hollywood film. He came from a prosperous Roman Catholic family with ties to the newspaper industry, including ownership of the Minneapolis Tribune. Hill was educated at The Blake School in Minnesota and went on to Yale University, where he studied music under composer Paul Hindemith and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 1943. He later earned a master's degree in literature and music from Trinity College Dublin. At Yale, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the Scroll & Key Society, The Spizzwinks(?), and The Whiffenpoofs, the oldest collegiate a cappella singing group in the United States.

Hill developed a passion for aviation early in life, obtaining his pilot's license at sixteen and memorizing the records of World War I flying aces. He particularly admired pilot Speed Holman. During World War II, he served in the United States Marine Corps as a transport pilot with VMR-152 in the South Pacific. When the Korean War began, he was recalled to active duty for eighteen months as a night fighter pilot, reaching the rank of major. He was subsequently stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point jet flight-training center in North Carolina. His aviation experience later shaped several of his films, including The Great Waldo Pepper, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The World According to Garp.

Following his discharge from the military after World War II, Hill worked as a newspaper reporter in Texas before using the GI Bill to pursue graduate study at Trinity College Dublin, where he examined James Joyce's use of music in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He made his stage debut in 1947 as a walk-on at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin with Cyril Cusack's company in a production of George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. In February 1948, he took a leading role in Raven of Wicklow by Bridget G. MacCarthy at the same theater.

Returning to the United States, Hill studied theater at HB Studio in New York City, performed Off Broadway, and toured with Margaret Webster's Shakespeare Repertory Company. His Broadway acting career began in 1951, with credits that included King Richard II, The Taming of the Shrew, and August Strindberg's Creditors, the last of which featured Bea Arthur. In 1952, he appeared in a supporting role in the Hollywood film Walk East on Beacon and acted in episodes of Lux Video Theatre and Kraft Theatre, as well as on radio.

Hill transitioned into directing for television, drawing on his Korean War experience to write the drama My Brother's Keeper, which aired live on Kraft Television Theatre in 1953 and featured Hill himself in the cast. The screenplay originated from an incident during his service at Cherry Point, when he had to be talked down by a ground controller at Atlanta airport. He also directed episodes of Ponds Theater and Lux Video Theatre, and his work on the Kraft Theatre adaptation of A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic, earned him two Emmy nominations for writing and directing at the 9th Primetime Emmy Awards. He went on to direct notable episodes of Playhouse 90, including The Helen Morgan Story in 1957, Child of Our Time and The Last Clear Chance in 1958, and Judgment at Nuremberg in 1959.

Hill returned to Broadway as a director in 1957 with Look Homeward, Angel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play starring Jo Van Fleet and Anthony Perkins that ran for 564 performances. This work earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Director in 1958. He continued directing on Broadway with The Gang's All Here in 1960, featuring Melvyn Douglas and running for 132 performances; Greenwillow in 1960, again with Anthony Perkins, for 97 performances; and Period of Adjustment in 1961, a Tennessee Williams play that ran for 132 performances, for which Hill replaced Elia Kazan. He later returned to Broadway to direct Henry, Sweet Henry in 1967, a musical adaptation of The World of Henry Orient, which ran for 80 performances.

Hill's stage success led to his feature film debut with the screen adaptation of Period of Adjustment in 1962, starring Jane Fonda and Jim Hutton, which performed well at the box office. He followed with Toys in the Attic in 1963, starring Dean Martin, and The World of Henry Orient in 1964, which he and producer Jerome Hellman developed through their own Pan Arts Company. The film received critical praise but was a commercial disappointment. Hill then directed the large-scale production Hawaii in 1966 after Fred Zinnemann withdrew from the project, and it became a major commercial success. He next directed Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967, a musical produced by Ross Hunter and starring Julie Andrews, though Hill was removed during the editing process over disagreements about the film's length.

Hill achieved his greatest commercial and critical recognition with two films starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released in 1969, was a major success and brought Hill an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. He reunited the same stars for The Sting in 1973, which earned him a second Academy Award nomination and the win for Best Director. His subsequent films included Slaughterhouse-Five in 1972, The Great Waldo Pepper in 1975, Slap Shot in 1977, A Little Romance in 1979, The World According to Garp in 1982, and his final film, Funny Farm, in 1988. His film The World of Henry Orient contains a scene that humorously references his former Yale teacher Paul Hindemith during a piano concerto sequence featuring Peter Sellers.