Biography

New York-born William Reynolds was a self-effacing editor with a distinguished sixty-year career in the motion picture industry, noted for his unobtrusive, seamless work on movies of every genre, from romantic melodramas to gangster films. A graduate of Princeton University, he started in the business, moving props as part of the 20th Century Fox swing gang. Displaying a keen interest in the art of editing, he was taken under the wing of the experienced Robert L. Simpson, whom he accompanied to Paramount as assistant in 1935. After just two years, Reynolds was promoted to full editor, his most prestigious assignment being Algiers (1938). In 1942, he moved across to 20th Century Fox, but wartime service put a temporary halt to his career. However, he did manage to sustain continuity by editing U.S. Army training films.

From 1946, Reynolds was part of a top-notch editing team assembled by Darryl F. Zanuck, himself a former editor and famous for his hands-on approach to post-production. During the remainder of his tenure at Fox, Reynolds cut some of the studio's best films, including the excellent sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); and glossy romances and musicals like Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Reynolds was a frequent collaborator and preferred editor for directors like Robert Wise and Joshua Logan. He did some of his most acclaimed work after free-lancing for three years, back at Fox, on The Sound of Music (1965) -- winning an Oscar and caustically commenting, "when in doubt, cut to Julie Andrews" (NY Times, July 22 1997)). Free-lancing again from 1970, he edited the first half of The Godfather (1972) (Francis Ford Coppola assigned the second half to Peter Zinner) and The Sting (1973) (which Reynolds regarded as one of his most demanding assignments). However, towards the end of his career, he was also involved in several significant commercial failures: Heaven's Gate (1980) -- on which he also acted as executive producer, Pirates (1986) and Ishtar (1987). In 1977, Reynolds was named by his peers in a Film Comment poll as one of the three best-ever film editors.