Lauded Film Editor William Reynolds Dies

William Reynolds, a film editor whose seamless assemblage of “The Sound of Music” and “The Sting” won him two Academy Awards, died in South Pasadena. He was 87.

Reynolds’ nearly 60-year career spanned the modern history of movie-making. He edited and co-edited 80 films ranging from science fiction classics (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”) to musicals (“Carousel,” “Hello Dolly” and “South Pacific”), dramas (“The Turning Point”) and epics (“The Godfather”).

He died late Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, his cousin said.

“William Reynolds was a true perfectionist, one who left his mark on an industry to which he gave so much,” said Julie Andrews, who starred as the merry governess in “The Sound of Music.”

Though virtually unknown to moviegoers, Reynolds was one of the quiet legends of Hollywood, a gentle man with impeccable timing and an innate sense of what an audience wanted to see. It is said that a movie is made in the editing room, where the best takes are fused together to tell a story. Reynolds, his friends and colleagues said, was a superlative storyteller.

“I valued Bill’s judgment more than I did anybody’s,” said director Robert Wise, who worked with Reynolds on five films. “It’s part of the editor’s job to evaluate what he has--and sometimes not use all of it. Bill had very good taste.”

Bette Midler, who worked with Reynolds on “Gypsy,” called the editor’s body of work “staggering.”

“His musicality was what really got me,” the actress said. “He knew music--understood it--and cut accordingly. He made [a film] very lyrical, even if it hadn’t been shot that way.”

Director Arthur Hiller, who worked with Reynolds on four movies, said he “edited by feel, not by rote. Every film he touched became a better film.”

To the actors whose performances he spliced together--from Marlon Brando to Marilyn Monroe, from Steve McQueen to Shirley MacLaine--Reynolds was known to have a knack for making the most of a performance. He admired actors and praised those whose talents made his job easier.

“There’s a secret to winning an Oscar for film editing. And that is: When in doubt, cut to Julie Andrews,” he told the members of the motion picture academy when he accepted his Oscar for “The Sound of Music” in 1966.

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To generations of younger film editors, Reynolds was seen as royalty--a master of a hidden profession in which often the best compliment was having your work go unnoticed.

“I’d like to think that when people see films, they’re not aware of editing,” Reynolds told an interviewer in 1990. “The only time I watch the editing in a film is when I’m bored.”

Reynolds described his job as being handed a jigsaw puzzle. The more “coverage” a director provided--the more varied camera angles and tight and wide shots of each scene--the more the editor had to work with. But every film began as hundreds of tiny pieces.

The opening sequence of “The Godfather” was one of the most challenging puzzles of Reynolds’ career. Director Francis Ford Coppola had shot extensive footage of the wedding of don Vito Corleone’s daughter. He also shot several scenes of the don granting favors in his office. But Coppola’s script did not specify exactly how the two elements would fit together.

Reynolds artfully intercut the footage, interspersing the revelry of the outdoor party with the scene in the darkened office, where a series of supplicants had come to ask for the don’s help. Film historians consider the sequence an editing masterpiece.

“[Reynolds] made a major contribution to the success of the film,” Coppola said. “The Godfather” won Oscars for best picture, best actor and best screenplay based on material from another medium.

Reynolds also established a strong reputation for cutting music and dance sequences. In “The Turning Point,” starring MacLaine and Anne Bancroft, director Herbert Ross shot excerpts from a number of ballets. It was up to Reynolds to choose which shots would go into the film. But instead of simply using what looked good, he enlisted the help of Ross’ wife, prima ballerina Nora Kaye.

“She came into the cutting room for two weeks to help Bill decide which were the most outstanding dances of Mikhail Baryshnikov and the others,” said Michael Polakow, a film editor who was then Reynolds’ assistant. “It was an example of his perfectionism. He knew this would be a record for all time.”

Reynolds received an Oscar nomination for that film--one of seven he received in his career--but lost to the editor of “Star Wars.”

Editors often are asked to solve a film’s problems in the cutting room. For example, director George Roy Hill fired an actor three-quarters through shooting “The Great Waldo Pepper,” starring Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon.

“Fix it!” Hill told Reynolds, who apparently succeeded in making the film work without the departed actor; Hill hired Reynolds to cut two more films.

Unlike some editors who find preview screenings intrusive, Reynolds liked to use them to polish his work.

“He liked to sit where he could hear where people laugh or don’t laugh and cry or don’t cry. And he loved to go outside as people were exiting the theater--to eavesdrop,” said film editor Jim Langlois, a former Reynolds assistant.

When assembling “The Sting,” starring Redford and Paul Newman, there was concern that the audience might not understand the twist at the end, when the two leading men are felled in a blaze of gunfire. Reynolds requested a test viewing with an audience. At the key moment, when Redford and Newman turn out to be alive after all, the audience gasped.

“We got ‘em,” a triumphant Reynolds told Hill, the director.

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Reynolds also knew there were moments when the best editing was none at all. In “The Great Waldo Pepper,” there was a scene in which a stuntman stepped from one plane to another in midair. The director had shot it with several cameras, but Reynolds opted to use a single uncut shot.

“I didn’t want to give anybody a moment’s suspicion that there was anything fake about it,” he said.

Born in Elmira, N.Y., in 1910, Reynolds graduated from Princeton University in 1933. He got a job as a prop handler at 20th Century Fox and moved into the editing room in 1935.

During World War II, he was assigned to the Army’s filmmaking unit, where he directed, edited and produced training films. By 1947, he was back in Hollywood.

Reynolds was close to several well-known talents, including Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Mitzi Gaynor and Leslie Caron. He was not intimidated by fame.

While cutting “Beloved Infidel,” a romance starring Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr, Reynolds angered Peck by including more footage of Kerr in a particular scene. Reynolds felt it was Kerr’s scene, and the audience needed to connect with her.

But Peck was irate. He had Reynolds summoned to a meeting with studio executives and demanded the scene be changed.

“My performance is a tour de force,” Reynolds recalled Peck arguing. “Why do you think they pay me $100,000 a picture?”

“I can’t imagine,” Reynolds replied dryly. The scene remained as Reynolds had cut it.