Barbara McLean

Born 1903-11-16 · Palisades Park, New Jersey, USA

Died 1996-03-28

Barbara McLean (November 16, 1903 – March 28, 1996) was an American film editor. In the period Darryl F. Zanuck was dominant at the 20th Century Fox Studio, from the 1930s through the 1960s, McLean was the Studio's most conspicuous editor and ultimately the head of its editing department. She won the 1944 Academy Award for Film Editing for the film Wilson. She was nominated for the same award for six additional films, including the "classic", All About Eve (1950). Her total of seven nominations for editing during her career was only surpassed in 2012 by Michael Kahn. She had a notable collaboration with the director Henry King that extended over twenty-nine films, including Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Her impact was summarized by Adrian Dannatt in 1996: McLean was "a revered editor who perhaps single-handedly established women as vital creative figures in an otherwise patriarchal industry. She received the inaugural American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award in 1988. She died in Newport Beach, California in 1996.