Two new memoirs by Guild members recount careers that span the history of film editing, from the silent era to the dawn of the digital age. Some Cutting Remarks opens in the 1920s, when film was either cut with a scissors or torn by snapping it between the fingers. With gentle understatement, Ralph Winters relates stories from his life as a respected editor at MGM. Cut to the Chase picks up roughly where Winters leaves off, focusing primarily on the tumultuous '60s and '70s, when Sam O'Steen was among the many brash young talents reshaping the industry.

Cut to the Chase

O'Steen rose to prominence during a time when the studios' iron grip had slackened enough to allow outsiders into the picture business. He worked with such directors as Roman Polanski, Alan Pakula, and Sidney Lumet, but he is best known for his work with Mike Nichols. His credits cover some of the most influential pictures of the period, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Rosemary's Baby (with Bob Wyman), Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Chinatown, Silkwood, Frantic, Working Girl and Wolf.

Especially impressive was the freedom of expression he found in The Graduate; in fact, Winters himself is said to have greatly admired the subliminal shots in its seduction scene. O'Steen -- who died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2000 -- doesn't linger on his successes or congratulate himself. He was nominated three times for an Academy Award, but a good story, such as the discovery of the surprise twist at the conclusion of The Graduate, clearly meant more to him than any honor. In this book, which comes out of a tape-recorded interview with his wife Bobbie O'Steen, a former editor and screenwriter herself, he reveals exactly how that final scene evolved.

"Mike [Nichols] said, 'Action,'" O'Steen recounts, "when we were all outside, and Dusty [Hoffman] and Kathy [Ross] ran onto the bus. Then the bus started moving and Dusty and Kathy came down the aisle and sat down at the back of the bus. The camera swung around and everybody on the bus reacted to them, including me. I'm on the bus because Mike couldn't be, he would have been recognized in that shot. But when the scene was supposed to end, Dusty and Kathy just sat there for a long time and looked at each other, not knowing what to do, because nobody was saying 'Cut' because Mike forgot to tell me to say 'Cut!' But, finally, I did. So when Dusty and Kathy look at each other indecisively like that in the dailies, Mike said, 'That's a hell of a moment.'"

O'Steen strongly believes in just this sort of seat-of-the-pants decision-making, and worries that directors and editors are losing their grip on the movies, thanks to a preview system that empowers studio production committees. He's also troubled by the rise of a digital technology that allows anyone and everyone to think they can edit a picture, resulting in "over-cutting." "I made fewer cuts the older I got," he admits. "There's a reality to that. There are no jerks, no rapid cuts in life either."

Some Cutting Remarks

Ralph Winters rose to great prominence in the business during another of Hollywood's golden eras, the late '20s and '30s, long before television. He worked for many directors, but may be best known for the work he did with Blake Edwards. Like O'Steen, his credits read like a history of the period: Gaslight, Little Women, On the Town, Quo Vadis?, Kiss Me Kate, High Society, Jailhouse Rock, Ben-Hur (with John Dunning), BUtterfield 8, The Pink Panther, The Front Page, 10, S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria.

During a time when the studios tightly controlled production, exhibition, and talent, Winters praises less well-known names such as executive producer Sam Zimbalist and especially, the toughness of MGM's supervising editor Margaret Booth. Perhaps because he came of age in a rigidly hierarchical system, he vowed never to argue with a director. Yet he believes that it's the editor's job to convince directors and producers not to let a picture get too long, and says that sometimes an editor must resort to "scare tactics" to convince others of the need to shorten a show. He most admired open-minded directors such as William Wyler, who wanted to hear suggestions from everyone.

Given the different eras these two editors lived in, one wouldn't expect them to have much in common. Surprisingly, a closer look at their lives shows how much they share. Both came from working-class families, and both found a way to hang around the studios as kids. Winters' father was a tailor who impressed Louis B. Mayer's brother, and so won a costuming job on the lot. O'Steen's father was a Dust Bowl refugee with a big family who settled in Burbank. As a kid, O'Steen made money delivering newspapers to the Warner Brothers lot. Later, he took pride in occupying one of the bungalows to which he once delivered.

Both O'Steen and Winters spent a great deal of time on the set. Winters was often asked by the studio to assist first-time directors -- especially from Broadway -- who might overlook shots necessary to tell a story effectively. Mike Nichols reached the same conclusion about O'Steen on his own: after seeing how useful he was in the production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he asked O'Steen to help him lay out the shots on all his films.

Eventually, success in the editing room gave both Winters and O'Steen a desire to direct. When MGM made a big push into TV production, Winters requested a six-month leave to pursue directing jobs. But despite his 33 years of faithful, Academy-Award-winning work as an editor, MGM responded by cutting his health benefits and eliminating a substantial insurance policy. Winters quit in disgust. After an unsuccessful year looking for directing jobs, he returned to the cutting room. O'Steen had more success as a director, winning an Emmy for directing the ground-breaking TV musical Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. But he, too, eventually went back to editing.

Both books have a chatty "as told to" quality, and both proceed chronologically -- picture by picture, name by name, and, in O'Steen's case, sometimes scene by scene. Ironically, O'Steen's book is the wittier, and could easily have been called Some Cutting Remarks, while Winters, who took home the Oscar for cutting the chariot races in Ben-Hur, could just as well have named his book Cut to the Chase.

Although both these books charm -- Winters with his sweet enthusiasm, and O'Steen with his bawdy honesty -- both tend to stay on the surface, giving us the flavor of the work and the colorful characters encountered on a production, without delving too deeply. At one point, O'Steen comments that the only way to learn how to edit film is to "wrestle with outtakes." Yet he quickly adds that the ability to tell a joke is a big part of the job. That sense of comic timing, along with the need to charm in order to succeed, may be why neither of these books takes itself too seriously.

Kit Stolz is a Guild member and story analyst.
He can be reached via email