Talk:Debra Hill

Place of birth
I'm currently working on a revision to this bio to add additional info about Hill's contributions to the film industry and I'm running into some discrepancies about her place of birth versus where she grew up.

The majority of obituaries state that Hill was born in Haddonfield and grew up in Philadelphia (IMDb, her 2005 NYT obit, her LA Times Obit). However, a more recent and more detailed NYT retrospective from 2019 lists her as born in Philadelphia and growing up in Haddonfield after briefly living in Connecticut. Additional references that support the idea that she was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Haddonfield include a |2005 NYT piece about Halloween that says Hill grew up in Haddonfield and an interview with Hill where she says she grew up in suburbia and that she's from Haddonfield.

Lastly, it appears that Hill graduated from Haddonfield Memorial High School, which would strongly suggest that she was living there at the time. (Source 1; Source 2; Source 3) I suspect early sources listed Hill as "from Haddonfield" and this got conflated with "born there," but that's speculation.

At the risk of wandering into WP:NOR I'm going to try to find a more authoritative source that confirms Hill's place of birth and hometown. However, I do feel confident that she at least grew up in Haddonfield, not Philadelphia. I'm leaning towards changing this information, not just marking it as contested, but would appreciate discussion before any decisions are made.

Vegantics (talk) 13:59, 18 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I am Bob Hill, Debra Hill’s brother.
 * Deb was born in Philadelphia Pa.
 * We grew up in Oueens NY,> Asbury Park NJ, > Philadelphia PA.> Neptune Twp. NJ.> Detroit MI > Haddonfield NJ.
 * Spending summers in Ocean City NJ. with grand folks. 2602:306:37F4:19A0:8125:55BB:14B9:F761 (talk) 13:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much, this aligns with my research and has prompted me to move forward with the edits. Your sister is one of my favorite filmmakers.
 * Vegantics (talk) 13:43, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I've now done a significant re-write to this page. To dig a little deeper into the place of birth issue, the 1950 U.S. census states that Jilda and Frank Hill lived in Lansdowne borough, Pennsylvania. (ED 23- 131, p 14, lines 27 and 28). I don't intend to cite this in the article itself given WP:NOR, but I will point out that it's a valid source in terms of WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD.
 * Vegantics (talk) 16:47, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Updates and rewrites
Hello,

As of last week I made significant updates and rewrites to the Debra Hill Wikipedia article and have ongoing changes that I intend to make. In the off chance anyone is reading this and interested in researching Debra Hill for any other projects, I have a wealth of archival research that I would be happy to share. Please feel free to reach out.

Vegantics (talk) 14:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)