Coming from a show-business family (his brother
Joseph De Grasse was a director
and his uncle
Sam De Grasse was an actor), De Grasse entered the business as
an assistant cameraman while still a high school student, and showed
such promise that he was made a full-time cinematographer by age 21. He
shot many silent pictures, mostly low-budget action films. When sound
films arrived De Grasse went back to being a camera operator -
apparently his own idea - but by the mid-'30s he was again a
cinematographer, and photographed many of RKO's more prominent
films.