William Forest Crouch
William Forest Crouch was an American director and writer of film, mostly shorts, best remembered for Reet, Petite, and Gone and its all-African-American cast. He was active during the 1940s.
He was born in Boone, Louisiana, with most of his family emigrating to Australia in the early 1960s, incentivised by the Australian government, who were optimistic about the emerging film industry. In Australia at the time, there was an undercurrent of racism that Crouch had to overcome as half of an interracial couple with children.
Crouch and his family escaped the cold of Australia's Southern region by spending William's final years in the Northern New South Wales and Gold Coast region with their large extended family of grandchildren.
