"The Work Of A Good Editor Does Not Reveal Itself Directly..." Editor Paul Hirsch recently sent the Newsletter a clipping with the following note: I had always thought that film editors' work was different from that of book or magazine editors. Recently, I was sent an obituary for a man I had never heard of, but which made me rethink that notion. I pass it along, with thanks to Irving Goldworm, who brought it to my attention. "Robert S. Gerdy was born on January 21,1919, in New York City, and on the sunny morning of December 23,1965, walking along lower Fifth Avenue, in this city he loved, he fell to the ground and died. He wass... within strolling distance of his office at The New Yorker where... he was an associate editor... He died quietly, just as he had lived. His specific work at The New Yorker was to help prepare some of the longer articles for publication - for want of a more satisfactory word, to "edit" them. It is one of the comic burdens of that particular kind of editor not to be able to explain to anyone else exactly what he does. As he works with a writer over a manuscript or a proof, placing his technical and aesthetic judgment at the writer's service, giving counsel when counsel is asked for, lending an objective eye, acting on occasion as a conscience, helping the writer in any way possible to say what he wants to say, only the editor and the writer can know what passes between them. The work of a good editor, like the work of a good teacher, does not reveal itself directly; it is reflected in the accomplishments of others. Bob Gerdy was a consummately good editor. He had the qualities that were needed. He was generous, he was sensitive, he was tactful, he was modest, he was patient, he was imaginative, he was unfailingly tuned in... He clearly had no wish to impose his will on anyone, and was content to help each writer attain in each piece of writing whatever it was that the writer himself aspired to. He never suffered from the editor's occupational delusion that he is writing the writer's work. It was enough for him to know that he was doing his own job. In a period in which celebrity is so widely pursued, he chose to practice an anonymous art; in a period dense with publi-city, he had no desire to become public; in a period of rampant self-assertion, he was self-effacing; in a violent period, he was extremely gentle; in a noisy period, he spoke softly. He found his own form of joy in helping other people bring their writings to a state of something like perfection. His other joy was to bask in the warmth of his family and his friends. It is a tribute to his extraordinary talent as an editor that many of those friends were the writers he worked with..."   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter Vol. 19, No. 4 - July/August 1998   Guild Home | Newsletter Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 776