Among his roles were the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, the bear in Valentine and Orson and the cat in Dick Wittington.

[1] Hill’s animal impersonations became very popular and in 1902 he was offered the role of the Cowardly Lion in the original production of The Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, who also wrote the book of the same name.

The costume weighed eighty pounds and was said to be modelled on a study of a lion’s head by Rosa Bonheur.

Hill was given limited visibility by peering through the lion’s mouth which was opened by pulling a string.

The sound of roaring was created by an offstage stagehand that rubbed a piece of resin up and down a stout cord fastened at one end to the centre of a drumhead stretched over a barrel.