Edward Dmytryk:
From Projectionist
To Editor To Director

The Editors Guild has awarded Edward Dmytryk a special Gold Card in recognition of his work sixty years ago as a founding member and first secretary of the Society of Motion Picture Editors (the forerunner of the Editors Guild). Gold Cards are usually awarded to fifty-year members. An editor in the Thirties, Edward went on to direct more than fifty films and was nominated for a Best Directing Oscar for 'Crossfire'. He recently talked to the Newsletter.

Edward Dmytryk at Paramount working as an assistant on 'It Ain't No Sin' starring Mae West. Edited by Leroy Stone and directed by Leo McCarey, the film was released in 1934 as 'Belle of the Nineties.'

"I grew up in the era when it was considered a little bit too hoity-toity to call yourself an editor," remembers Edward. He recalls that people started to use the term editor after they formed the Society in 1937. The members felt that with more prestige would come more money. At that time everyone was trying to improve their image. "For instance, script clerks became script supervisors. Cameramen became directors of photography."

Edward explained, "After the Wagner Act was passed we had the right to form unions. We thought we would just form an organization that would be a good fellowship organization, we would hold a dance every year or something like that." But wages weren't uniform across Hollywood, for instance Paramount paid a lot more for a cutter than Columbia did, so the lower paid editors were also keen to organize for better pay.

[In 1944] "they decided to join the IA because they were getting nowhere," according to Edward. But by then his career as a director had taken off.

He had been a student at CalTech, majoring in mathematics, "I was a science student, but after one year I decided I liked the studio people better. And I liked the engineers. I was working weekends at the studios."

He began at the very bottom of the Hollywood ladder: "I started out as a messenger boy and became a projectionist. I was getting 57 cents an hour. I used to run reels for all the editors at Paramount. [Then] I was an assistant for George Nichols. Later on I became an editor. I worked mostly with Leo McCarey and George Cukor. It's an art you mostly learn by watching, by listening. When I started out I used to help out with splicing in the laboratory, cutting was all done on a silent Moviola. The picture's what you want to cut, and then you can make the sound fit it. You learn how to read lips, you learn how to read the [optical] track."

Long hours for filmmakers are not a new phenomenon. "Henry's, on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street, was the best restaurant in town then and it stayed open all night because people worked all night. When sound first came in they had no sound stages so that trucks going by were a problem, so they shot at night."

"When I went to work at Paramount as a kid, from then on until sound came in, nearly all the editors were women. Then when sound came in the executives figured - it's hard to believe now - that the women were not technically minded enough to cut sound."

To put Edward's career in perspective - Oscar-winning editor Bill Reynolds was once his assistant and Edward taught him his overlap system. (See his book "On Film Editing.")

In 1935 Edward directed 'The Hawk' and in 1939 his directing career began in earnest. He directed 'The Television Spy' followed by 'Golden Gloves' and worked steadily until he was singled out by the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee, becoming one of the Hollywood Ten. His new book, "Odd Man Out", chronicles that dreadful period.

His career picked up again in the Fifties and he directed many memorable films, including 'The Caine Mutiny' which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture.

In the Eighties Edward taught at USC. He has written several books for Focal Press on filmmaking, "On Film Editing" being one. He still lives in L.A. with his wife, Jean, and remembers his old editing friends like Harry Gerstad and Desmond Marquette.

"Odd Man Out: a memoir of the Hollywood Ten" pub. Southern Illinois University Press,1996. Also see "It's a Hell of a Life, But not a Bad Living" pub. New York Times Books, 1978. (Isn't that title the best description of the industry you've ever read?)