He is also credited as being Hollywood's first ‘sound man’; he was the recording engineer on the seminal Al Jolson picture, The Jazz Singer (1927), as well as many other early talkies.
In a career with Warner Brothers that spanned 46 years, he rose to become their Director of Sound and won two Academy Awards out of eight nominations in total.
His father, George Alfred Groves, was a master barber and talented musician who founded the first brass band in St Helens.
He spent a year in Coventry working for GEC developing early wireless receivers and then applied for employment in the United States.
[1] In his lengthy Warner Brothers career, George Groves pioneered numerous other sound techniques and practices that the film and television industries take for granted today, including ADR and the use of radio microphones.
In 1993, George Groves’ 92-year-old sister, Hilda Barrow from Liverpool, began a campaign for official recognition in the United Kingdom of her brother's pioneering work.