Born in California, MacWilliams started his career in the silent days. He worked in the United Kingdom for much of the 1930s, working on several musicals with Jessie Matthews. He returned to the US in the 1940s where he worked extensively for 20th Century Fox, filming Laurel and Hardy's first two films for the studio and also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Lifeboat in 1944. He had previously worked with Hitchcock on one occasion in Britain.

He later worked in television on such shows as Highway Patrol, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Untouchables and My Living Doll before he retired in the mid-1960s.

• Glen MacWilliams at IMDb