Gus Hill (born Gustave Metz; 22 February 1858 – 20 April 1937) was an American vaudeville performer who juggled Indian clubs.

[4][a] On 16 June 1876, when Hill was eighteen, he was listed as a club swinger on a bill for a vaudeville show at Tony Pastor's theater in New York.

[3][b] Gus Hill soon moved into show business management, although he continued to perform for ten years or more.

He produced Gus Hill's World of Novelties in the 1886–87 season, featuring the new performers Joe Weber and Lew Fields.

[7] Hill was known for cost-cutting, using old scenery and costumes, and employing performers who could not demand high wages since they were not yet known, or were past their peak.

Typically the show moved to a new city by train on a Monday morning, and were put up at a boarding house for performers at their destination.

[7] A reviewer described Hill's show at the Haymarket Theater in Chicago in 1896: The program for the week contains several features that are popular with lovers of vaudeville.

It includes Fred Hallen and Molly Fuller, who appear in a singing sketch in which they introduce some novel and entertaining features; the American Macs; Frank Latona in a musical specialty; Annie Whitney in sentimental ballads and serio-comic songs; James Bingham, ventriloquist; Walter Reed, who gives a burlesque flying ring and trapeze performance; the Speck Brothers, comical midget boxers; and Montgomery and Stone, buck and wing dancers.

[9] He managed to poach Billy Reeves from Fred Karno's show to appear in his own Around the Clock vaudeville company.

[14] With the "Columbia Wheel" a series of companies followed each other round a circuit of theaters, a concept for which he claimed the credit.

2 circuit, which had forty theaters and thirty-four touring companies, to a new corporation called the American Burlesque Association.

[3] One of these was Gus Hill's Smart Set Company, which starred performers such as Billy McClain, Ernest Hogan, Tom McIntosh and Sherman H. Dudley.

The troupe staged vaudeville-style shows with comedy sketches, songs, dances and specialty acts.

[16] Gus Hill's Smart Set put on the touring show The Black Politician, a musical comedy, in 1904–08.

[23] In the 1890s Hill started producing a vaudeville act that was based on New York Sunday World's cartoon, The Yellow Kid.

[25] The Yellow Kid cartoon featured a series called McFadden's Row of Flats in the New York Journal in 1896.

[27] The play was a broad comedy revolving around interactions between Dan McFadden and Sandy McTavish, stereotypes of the witty Irishman and the tight-fisted Scot.

[27] The 1935 film, adapted by Casey Robinson, featured Walter C. Kelly, Andy Clyde and Richard Cromwell.

[29] In 1922 Hill staged a version of Mutt and Jeff performed by Conoly's Colored Comedians at the Lafayette Theatre, New York.

A reviewer in Billboard said :There is no reason why this show should not furnish a very complete evening's entertainment for either colored or white audiences.