Biography

American film editor who occasionally directed, but won Oscars in his primary field. The son of Harry W. Gerstad, silent film cinematographer, Harry Donald Gerstad grew up in Hollywood. In his late teenage years he got work as a laboratory assistant at Hal Roach Studios, then Warner Bros., and finally at Republic Pictures.

Following the Second World War, he began editing feature films at RKO, working frequently with director Edward Dmytryk, who mentored Gerstad and helped him find work. In 1949 Gerstad was hired by Stanley Kramer as editorial supervisor and moved to Kramer's unit at Columbia Pictures. He won an Academy Award for his editing of Champion (1949) and shared the Oscar with Elmo Williams for High Noon (1952). He was one of several Kramer staff to work on the TV series Adventures of Superman (1952), and directed episodes as well as editing them. In the 1960s he worked for Bing Crosby Productions and 20th Century-Fox as editorial supervisor, as well as for John Wayne's Batjac Productions. He retired in 1973 and lived the remainder of his life in Palm Springs, where he died in 2002 at 93.