Barbara McLean; Groundbreaking Film Editor

Barbara McLean, pioneering woman film editor for 20th Century Fox who won an Academy Award in 1944 for her work on “Wilson,” has died. She was 92.

McLean died Thursday in Newport Beach, where she had lived since her retirement from the studios in 1969.

Originally from New Jersey, McLean began her Hollywood career in the late 1920s and earned her first film credit for editing “The Affairs of Cellini” in 1934.

In 1935 she followed the legendary Darryl Zanuck to 20th Century Fox.

“As the only woman in the projection room with Zanuck, she had great influence on him concerning costumes, whom he hired as actors and many other areas beyond cutting film,” film historian and professor Tom Stempel said Monday.

Chronicled in the film reference book “Reel Women,” McLean was one of only eight women film editors working in Hollywood in the 1930s. She became chief of Fox’s editing division in 1949.

Stempel, who has written several books about the craftsmen who work in Hollywood, rated McLean “one of the best editors in town.”

Over the years, McLean worked with such noted directors as Henry King, John Ford and Elia Kazan.

The myriad films she edited included “In Old Chicago,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Suez,” “Jesse James,” “Tobacco Road,” “Song of Bernadette,” “12 O’Clock High,” “All About Eve” and “The Robe.”

Although “Wilson,” the biographical film about President Woodrow Wilson, did poorly at the box office, it won five Oscars, including McLean’s for editing.

In 1951, McLean married director Robert Webb. They had worked together on the film “David and Bathsheba” and began dating after the film’s star, Susan Hayward, invited them to dinner at her home.