Frank R. Growcott

Biography

Before the trenches of the First World War had even cooled, Frank R. Growcott was already carving silent stories onto celluloid: in 1914 he sent Shakespeare on a whirlwind of passion and swordplay in *Loves and Adventures in the Life of Shakespeare*, then marched a rag-tag band along the dusty highways of *The Road to Calais* that same year. Barely pausing for breath, he plunged beneath gaslit fog the following season to expose the shadows and cutthroat alleys of *The Underworld of London* (1915), sealing his reputation as a teller of swift, vivid tales in an age when pictures had only just learned to speak for themselves.