My Own Private Oscars: Best Film Editing

Showing posts with label Best Film Editing. Show all posts

Best Film Editing, 1948

Awards presented March 24, 1949

And the nominees were ...

... when they should have been ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Paul Weatherwax, The Naked City.

Police lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) heads the investigation of the murder of a young woman (whose corpse is alleged to have been played by Shelley Winters). This enormously influential departure from the confines of studio filming forced Weatherwax to integrate footage shot on the streets of New York City, often by hidden cameras, with more conventional staged scenes. It resulted in the first of his two Oscars in a career that began in 1928.

... when it should have gone to ...

Christian Nyby, Red River.

The cattle drive in Red River

Nyby also edited the film's climactic fight between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift

Christian Nyby

Nyby had edited director Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, and the cattle drive of Red River gave him a chance to work with some demanding action footage, including a stampede. He had begun his career as an editor in 1943, but the association with Hawks spurred Nyby into a move into directing in 1951 on The Thing From Another World, which was produced by Hawks. The Hawksian touches in The Thing have led many to assume that Nyby was only nominally its director, but the truth is that Nyby was probably a very apt pupil. He went on to a long career as a television director, and his son, Christian I. Nyby II, followed in his footsteps, sometimes on the same series on which the elder Nyby worked.

Best Film Editing, 1947

Awards presented March 20, 1948

The nominees were ...

Monica Collingwood, The Bishop's Wife
Harmon Jones, Gentleman's Agreement
Francis Lyon, Robert Parrish, Body and Soul
Fergus McDonell, Odd Man Out
George White, Green Dolphin Street

And the Oscar went to ...

Francis Lyon, Robert Parrish, Body and Soul.

Robert Parrish

This was, regrettably, the only Oscar for Body and Soul, but it was an entirely deserved one. Lyon and Parrish's editing of the fight sequences set a standard for all future boxing films, with their shrewd pacing and apt use of crowd reaction shots. It was the only Oscar for Lyon, who, though born in North Dakota, began his film editing career in England at J. Arthur Rank Studios. He turned to directing in 1954, working mainly on B pictures before moving into television. It was also the only Oscar for Parrish, though he received another nomination for All the King's Men. Parrish had an interestingly varied Hollywood career, beginning as a child actor in 1927 and appearing in such films as Sunrise, All Quiet on the Western Front, City Lights, and The Informer. He was also an apprentice film editor on the last-named, whose director, John Ford, became a mentor; Parris worked as a sound editor as well on several of Ford's films of the 1930s and early '40s. During the war he edited several documentaries made by Ford for the War Department, including the Oscar-winning The Battle of Midway. Like Lyon, Parrish also became a director, starting in 1951 with the film noir Cry Danger. He wrote two entertaining memoirs, Growing Up in Hollywood and Hollywood Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Best Film Editing, 1946

Awards presented March 13, 1947

The nominees were ...

Arthur Hilton, The Killers
William Hornbeck, It's a Wonderful Life
Harold Kress, The Yearling
William Lyon, The Jolson Story
Daniel Mandell, The Best Years of Our Lives

And the Oscar went to ...

Daniel Mandell, The Best Years of Our Lives.

One of unnominated cinematographer Gregg Toland's characteristic deep-focus compositions for The Best Years of Our Lives: Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Russell, and Fredric March at the piano, Dana Andrews in the phone booth

This was the second of Mandell's three Oscars. Only Ralph Dawson, Michael Kahn, and Thelma Schoonmaker have also won three times.

Best Film Editing, 1945

Awards presented March 7, 1946

The nominees were ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Robert J. Kern, National Velvet.

Elizabeth Taylor on "The Pie," actually a horse named King Charles

Well, obviously you don't put a proto-star like twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor through a real steeplechase, so you need an editor to make the risks look convincing. Taylor later claimed that a fall from a horse during filming caused lifelong back problems, though the film was one of her favorites. In any case, the more dangerous riding scenes were done by Rex "Snowy" Baker, Johnny Carpenter, and Dale Evans's stunt double, Alice Van Springsteen. Kern began his career in 1922 and spent most of it, from Viva Villa! in 1934 to Plymouth Adventure in 1952, at MGM. This was his only Oscar; he had been nominated once before, for David Copperfield. His brother, Hal C. Kern, was the Oscar-winning editor of Gone With the Wind.

Best Film Editing, 1944

Awards presented March 15, 1945
The nominees were ...

Roland Gross, None but the Lonely Heart
Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom, Since You Went Away
Owen Marks, Janie
Barbara McLean, Wilson
Leroy Stone, Going My Way

And the Oscar went to ...

Barbara McLean, Wilson.

Barbara McLeane

Okay, I'm not going to grouse about Darryl F. Zanuck's shameless promotion of Wilson here. McLean was a legend in the industry, the head of the editing department at 20th Century-Fox at a time when the industry was shameless about its sexism. It was her only win out of seven nominations, and although editing the special effects footage of The Rains Came was probably a greater challenge, Wilson was a long (154 minutes) film with a lot to get through. It was also directed by Henry King, with whom McLean often worked. King was a director of no particular distinction, and he relied on her to make him look good. She was also nominated for editing Alexander's Ragtime Band and The Song of Bernadette, which King directed. She also had the complete trust of Zanuck, who called her "Bobby." When McLean died at the age of ninety-two in 1996, her New York Times obituary recalled, "Studio executives knew that when Mr. Zanuck prefaced a statement with 'Bobby says . . . ,' he wasn't expressing an opinion but announcing a decision."

Best Film Editing, 1943

Awards presented March 2, 1944

The nominees were ...

George Amy, Air Force
Doane Harrison, Five Graves to Cairo
Owen Marks, Casablanca
Barbara McLean, The Song of Bernadette
Sherman Todd, John Link, For Whom the Bell Tolls

And the Oscar went to ...

George Amy, Air Force.

Winocki (John Garfield) helps the wounded Quincannon (John Ridgely) land the plane in Air Force

In this generally exciting movie about the lives and deaths of a bomber crew during the Wake Island and Coral Sea battles, the propaganda is as thick as the flak. The excitement comes from director Howard Hawks's usual fast-paced tough-guy camaraderie; a cast that includes John Garfield, Gig Young, and Arthur Kennedy; and the cutting by Warner Bros. editor Amy, who had begun his career in silent films. He was a favorite of director Michael Curtiz because of his handling of action sequences. Amy also directed several of Warners' B pictures.

Best Film Editing, 1942

Awards presented March 4, 1943

The nominees were ...

George Amy, Yankee Doodle Dandy
Harold F. Kress, Mrs. Miniver
Daniel Mandell, The Pride of the Yankees
Otto Meyer, The Talk of the Town
Walter Thompson, This Above All

And the Oscar went to ...

Daniel Mandell, The Pride of the Yankees.

Daniel Mandell

Righty Gary Cooper as lefty Lou Gehrig

With the possible exception of Field of Dreams, this is the most popular baseball movie of all, drenched in sentiment, pumped full of uplift. Gary Cooper plays Lou Gehrig, who was forced to retire on July 4, 1939, because he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which consequently became known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Producer Sam Goldwyn, who knew nothing about baseball, bought the story at the urging of Niven Busch, who was working for him as a story editor. Though Goldwyn was aware that sports movies rarely succeeded at the box office, he was convinced that the film would succeed after watching the newsreel of Gehrig's farewell speech in Yankee Stadium. (The real thing is simpler, less tear-jerking than Cooper's rendition of it under Sam Wood's direction.) Mandell is credited with the solution to one of the film's technical problems: Gehrig was left-handed, Cooper right-handed. So Mandell suggested that Cooper bat normally but run to third base instead of first. The images in those sequences were printed in reverse, which also necessitated reversing the insignia on the players' uniforms so they'd come out the right way on screen. His ingenious solution also explains why the film was nominated for special effects. This was the first of three Oscars for former circus and vaudeville acrobat Mandell, who became a film editor after serving in World War I, when a friend helped him get a job at MGM. He subsequently worked at Columbia before becoming Goldwyn's chief editor. He was also a favorite editor of Billy Wilder, with whom he worked on five films.

Cooper delivers Gehrig's farewell address

Best Film Editing, 1941

Awards presented February 26, 1942

The nominees were ...

James B. Clark, How Green Was My Valley
William Holmes, Sergeant York
Harold F. Kress, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Daniel Mandell, The Little Foxes
Robert Wise, Citizen Kane

... when they should have been ...

James B. Clark, How Green Was My Valley
Stuart Gilmore, The Lady Eve
William Holmes, Sergeant York
Thomas Richards, The Maltese Falcon
Robert Wise, Citizen Kane

And the Oscar went to ...

William Holmes, Sergeant York.

Given that this film produced Howard Hawks's only directing nomination, you might be tempted to make something of Holmes's contribution to the film's success. But Holmes was just a Warner Bros. staff editor assigned to the film, and this was his only win and only nomination. Hawks freelanced his way around the studio system, and when he was subjected to a strong-willed producer like Sergeant York's Hal Wallis, his work lost some of its edge and energy. It's an entertaining movie, but at two hours and fourteen minutes a little overlong. In other words, it could have used more editing, and I suspect that if Hawks's had had his way, some of the sentimentality and flag-waving would have been excised.

... when it should have gone to ...

Robert Wise, Citizen Kane.

Robert Wise

Given the many visual and narrative innovations of Citizen Kane, Wise would have been an obvious choice, if an ironic one: He went on to the infamous editing chore on The Magnificent Ambersons after the studio took it out of Welles's hands. And he won two directing Oscars to Welles's none. He had begun quite literally in the mailroom at RKO, then apprenticed as a sound effects editor before working as an assistant film editor. In 1939 he became the sole editor on Bachelor Mother and My Favorite Wife. His first work as a director was, again ironically, on Ambersons, for which he was called on to reshoot certain scenes to ensure continuity in the heavily edited version. In 1944 he received his first credit as director on producer Val Lewton's stylish horror film The Curse of the Cat People, after the original director Gunther von Frisch was fired from the project.

Best Film Editing, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

The nominees were ...

Anne Bauchens, North West Mounted Police
Hal C. Kern, Rebecca
Warren Low, The Letter
Robert Simpson, The Grapes of Wrath
Sherman Todd, The Long Voyage Home

And the Oscar went to ...

Anne Bauchens, North West Mounted Police.

Anne Bauchens

Women have had a better time of it making a name as film editors than they have as directors or cinematographers. Barbara McLean at 20th Century-Fox and Margaret Booth at MGM were revered figures, though the latter never won an Oscar and the former won hers (for Wilson) only after five previous nominations. Bauchens was Cecil B. DeMille's right-hand woman, editing every one of his films from 1918 through 1956. This was the second of her four nominations -- all of them for DeMille pictures -- and her only win. In North West Mounted Police, a Texas Ranger (Gary Cooper) teams up with the Mounties to catch the bad guy. It's silly stuff, without the jaw-dropping extravagance of DeMille's biblical epics, so there's not much left to recommend it except a watchable cast including Madeleine Carroll, Paulette Goddard, Preston Foster, Robert Preston, Akim Tamiroff, Walter Hampden, Lon Chaney Jr., and Robert Ryan.

Gary Cooper and Lynne Overman captured by Indians in North West Mounted Police

Best Film Editing, 1939

Awards presented February 29, 1940

And the nominees were ...

Charles Frend, Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Gene Havlick, Al Clark, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom, Gone With the Wind
Otho Lovering, Dorothy Spencer, Stagecoach
Barbara McLean, The Rains Came

And the Oscar went to ...
Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom, Gone With the Wind.

It's a pretty safe bet that the biggest, longest picture of the year is going to win the editing Oscar, unless some other picture contains some elaborate, tricky montages. So no surprise here. Stagecoach might have won for its extended scene with the stagecoach fleeing the Indian attack, though to trained eyes the cuts, from the spectacular stuntwork of Yakima Canutt and the speeding coach to the shots of the people inside the coach that were obviously done on a soundstage with rear projection, are routine and obvious. Kern was producer David O. Selznick's supervising film editor for sixteen years, and given the micromanaging of which Selznick was capable, he must have had the patience of a saint. He also received nominations for Rebecca and Since You Went Away. Newcom, who came over from MGM as Kern's associate film editor, was also nominated with him for Since You Went Away, and later for Annie Get Your Gun and Tora! Tora! Tora!

Best Film Editing, 1938

Awards presented February 23, 1939

The nominees were ...

Ralph Dawson, The Adventures of Robin Hood
Gene Havlick, You Can't Take It With You
Tom Held, The Great Waltz
Tom Held, Test Pilot
Barbara McLean, Alexander's Ragtime Band

And the Oscar went to ...

Ralph Dawson, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

This was Dawson's third Oscar, but he would have to wait sixteen years for another nomination, for The High and the Mighty.

Best Film Editing, 1937

Awards presented March 10, 1938

The nominees were ...

Bernard W. Burton, One Hundred Men and a Girl
Al Clark, The Awful Truth
Gene Havlick, Gene Milford, Lost Horizon
Elmo Veron, Captains Courageous
Basil Wrangell, The Good Earth

And the Oscar went to ...

Gene Havlick, Gene Milford, Lost Horizon.

Considering that the movie was way over budget, that director Frank Capra shot more than a million feet of film, that its first cut was six hours long, which was trimmed to a still-gargantuan three and a half hours for the first preview, it's clear that Havlick and Milford deserved some recognition for what Capra put them through. Columbia head Harry Cohn then took over and supervised the editing down to 132 minutes. After another cut of fourteen minutes, Capra sued the studio; he finally reached a settlement, but held a grudge for the rest of his contract with Columbia. But further cuts were to come: It was pared down to 92 minutes during World War II, eliminating some anti-war elements, and during the anticommunist 1950s it lost some scenes that seemed favorable to the Chinese. Havlick was nominated two more times, both of them for films directed by Capra: You Can't Take It With You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Milford, who had been nominated before for One Night of Love, later won another Oscar, for On the Waterfront.

Best Film Editing, 1936

Awards presented March 4, 1937

The nominees were ...

Edward Curtiss, Come and Get It
Ralph Dawson, Anthony Adverse
William S. Gray, The Great Ziegfeld
Barbara McLean, Lloyd's of London
Otto Meyer, Theodora Goes Wild
Conrad A. Nervig, A Tale of Two Cities

... when they should have been ...

Edward Curtiss, Come and Get It
Ralph Dawson, Anthony Adverse
William S. Gray, The Great Ziegfeld
Barbara McLean, Lloyd's of London
Tom Held, San Francisco
Conrad A. Nervig, A Tale of Two Cities

And the Oscar went to ...

Ralph Dawson, Anthony Adverse.

Dawson had won an Oscar for film editing the previous year. He'll win another two years later, for The Adventures of Robin Hood.

... when it should have gone to ...

Tom Held, San Francisco.

Held would normally get the nod from the Academy because he is the nominal film editor on San Francisco, and he would be nominated for two Oscars in 1939. Perhaps he missed out on this one, because the earthquake sequence, which is the editing tour de force in the film, was done by John Hoffman and especially Slavko Vorkapich, whose work with montage is ranked alongside that of Sergei Eisenstein in influence. See here for some visual evidence of Vorkapich's work on San Francisco.

Slavko Vorkapich, seated, demonstrates the classic editing device, the Moviola, c. 1950.

Best Film Editing, 1935

Awards presented March 5, 1936

The Academy was still indicating who placed second and third. Margaret Booth came in second for Mutiny on the Bounty and George Hively placed third for The Informer.

The nominees were ...

And the Oscar went to ...

Ralph Dawson, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

This was the first of three Oscars for Dawson, who spent his career primarily at Warner Bros.

Best Film Editing, 1934

Awards presented February 27, 1935

Film editing remains a mystery to perhaps most moviegoers, which is as it should be: You should be watching what happens, not how it's put together. So especially for watchers of the televised Oscars, it can be one of those awards, like sound or short films, during which you fix another drink. But given how essential good editing is to a film, it's surprising it took the Academy so long to give out an award for it.

The nominees were ...

Anne Bauchens, Cleopatra

Gene Milford, One Night of Love

Conrad Nervig, Eskimo

And the Oscar went to ...

Conrad Nervig, Eskimo.

The cast of Eskimo with John Barrymore on the set of Reunion in Vienna

Nervig's win was for what might be called a "docudrama." Like White Shadows in the South Seas, it was directed by W.S. Van Dyke and shot by Clyde De Vinna, and blended documentary footage shot in Alaska with staged narrative footage. The screenplay was by John Lee Mahin from a book by Peter Freuchen about the problems caused by the confrontation of the indigenous peoples with white traders. Nervig's task was to blend the documentary sequences of animal hunts and daily life of the Inuit with the staged stuff. In a way, the editing Oscar started off much the way the cinematography Oscar did: favoring the exotic over the familiar. An extraordinarily expensive film for its day, Eskimo was a box-office failure. Nervig, who spent his career at MGM, would win another Oscar for another film that blended location footage with staged action, King Solomon's Mines (1950). He was also nominated for A Tale of Two Cities (1935).