Barbara McLean

Name	Barbara McLean
Birth name	Barbara Pollut
Birth date	November 16, 1903
Birth place	Palisades Park, New Jersey
Death date	March 28, 1996
Death place	Newport Beach, California
Spouse	Robert D. Webb (1951–1990)
Academyawards	Best Editing 1944 Wilson

Barbara McLean (November 16, 1903 – March 28, 1996) was an American film editor with sixty-two film credits. In the period Darryl F. Zanuck was dominant at the 20th Century Fox Studio, from the 1930s through the 1960s, McLean was the Studio's most conspicuous editor and ultimately the head of its editing department. She won the 1944 Academy Award for Film Editing for the film Wilson. She was nominated for the same award for six additional films including the "classic", All About Eve (1950). Her total of seven nominations for editing during her career has never been surpassed and has been equaled, only twice.

She had a notable collaboration with the director Henry King that extended over twenty-nine films, including Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Her impact was summarized by Adrian Dannatt in 1996: McLean was "a revered editor who perhaps single-handedly established women as vital creative figures in an otherwise patriarchal industry."

Early life and career

McLean was born in Palisades Park, New Jersey; she was the daughter of Charles Pollut, who ran a film laboratory. As a child she worked on release prints from the adjacent studio of E. K. Lincoln, who was an early producer of films. No doubt the early experience in processing of film was helpful to McLean when she became an assistant film editor, but McLean later commented that her musical training as a child also was very important. In 1933 she received her first editing credit for Gallant Lady;

Darryl Zanuck not only entrusted McLean with the editing of 20th Century Fox's most important projects, he depended on her judgment in many other areas of filmmaking, including, casting and production. She was also instrumental in the careers of such other film editors as Hugh S. Fowler, William H. Reynolds, and Robert Simpson.

Collaboration with Henry King

{| class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 95%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" | style="text-align: left;" | "For all her focus on keeping the narrative moving, McLean's editing could dazzle if called for. In A Bell for Adano (1945), she took material director Henry King shot on the return of the Italian POWs to their village and put it together with such a pure sense of emotion that when she cut at exactly the right moment to King's overhead shot of the prisoners and villagers coming together in the square, the cut was more heart-stopping than conventional close-ups would have been." |- | style="text-align: left;" | — Tom Stempel was the only film for which McLean won an Academy Award for Film Editing.

It may be that King and McLean's greatest accomplishment was the film Twelve O'Clock High (1949); Sean Axmaker has written "Twelve O'Clock High was one of the first and arguably the greatest of the Hollywood films to examine the pressures of command and the psychological toll of making life and death decisions for men they come know and care for." While the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, neither King nor McLean received personal Academy Award recognition for their work in making that film. Twelve O'Clock High was entered into the U.S. National Film Registry in 1998.

Final cuts

Nearly half of the sixty-two films crediting McLean as editor were directed by Henry King. The other films she edited at 20th Century Fox involved many different directors, including many highly notable ones. She was nominated for an Academy Award for editing The Rains Came (1939), which was the only time she worked with director Clarence Brown. She edited one of John Ford's films, Tobacco Road (1941), and one of George Cukor's, Winged Victory (1944). In 1950-1951, McLean edited three of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's films, including All About Eve, for which she received her final Academy Award nomination. Her nomination was among the fourteen nominations for the film, another Academy Award record that has never been surpassed. All About Eve was archived at the National Film Registry in 1990 and was thus among the first fifty films to be archived.

In the 1940s, McLean and her first husband divorced. In 1951 she married Robert D. Webb, who had been working as King's assistant director. In 1952, McLean edited one of Elia Kazan's films, Viva Zapata, and in 1954 she edited Michael Curtiz's The Egyptian. She also edited the first movie produced in CinemaScope, Henry Koster's The Robe(1953). McLean's last editing credit was for Untamed (1955), which was her twenty-ninth collaboration with Henry King. Her later work was primarily supervisorial and administrative. McLean retired from 20th Century Fox in 1969, apparently because of her husband's poor health. She received the inaugural American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award in 1988. She died in Newport Beach, California in 1996.

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Category:1903 births Category:1996 deaths Category:American film editors Category:Best Film Editing Academy Award winners