Craig Hutchinson

Biography

A prairie-town boy from Austin, Minnesota—summer of 1891—Craig Hutchinson grew up listening to the wind whistle through cornfields and decided, early on, that stories moved faster than Midwestern trains. By 1917 he was already tightening the screws on audiences with In the Clutches of Milk, a one-reel curiosity that proved suspense could be wrung from the most innocent white liquid. Four years later he delivered a double punch: The Noiseless Valley and Lines Busy, both 1921, both brisk, both reminding viewers that silence onscreen could shout louder than words. Behind the camera he scribbled, framed, cajoled performances, then slipped from the spotlight as quietly as he’d entered it. Hutchinson’s final fade-out came in February 1976, leaving the valley still noiseless and the lines forever busy.