American composer and motion picture music director William F. Schiller was born in New York, New York on January 11, 1887. He served in World War I in the United States Army 10th Ammunition Train, enlisting on June 29, 1915. He is credited as either an orchestrator or composer on 23 films in the 1920s and 1930s, including on The Phantom of the Opera (1925), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Great Expecations (1934), and Howard Hughes' The Outlaw (1943).