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A busy director of low-budget films in the 1920s, Kentucky native Dallas M. Fitzgerald had acted in films as early as 1916. Hired as a director by the small-scale, ill-named Greater Pictures Corp. in 1917, Fitzgerald went on to helm mainly action melodramas believing, according to a 1921 interview, that the "public likes pictures made outdoors." Several of these outdoor pictures featured Universal star Gladys Walton. Fitzgerald also directed the likes of Miriam Cooper and Beverly Bayne, early silent screen stars well past their prime. In the late '20s, Fitzgerald became his own producer, releasing such potboilers as Wilful Youth (1927) and Golden Shackles (1928) through the low-budget Peerless Pictures. In the sound era, Fitzgerald wrote screenplays for such serials as The Black Coin (1936), The Clutching Hand (1936), and The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock (1938).