#barbara mclean

The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950).

Barbara McLean (born Palisades Park, NJ, 16 November 1903 – 28 March 1996) edited more than 60 films over 3 decades and was nominated for 7 Academy Awards: Les Misérables (1935), Lloyd’s of London (1936), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), The Rains Came (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Wilson (1944), and All About Eve (1950). She received the Oscar for Wilson.

Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." Between 1930 and 1950, over 40% of film industry employees were women, 25% of all screenwriters were female, one woman ran MGM behind the scenes, over a dozen women worked as producers, a woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times, and press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender equality and employment. Oh how the times have changed. But as the movement for Gender Equality and Parity in Hollywood gains significant momentum, it does well to look upon the golden age of Hollywood and the roles women played behind the cameras throughout the industry in Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood, a new history by J.E. Smyth from publisher Oxford University Press. 

Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947).

All About Eve received 6 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders), Best Costume Design (Edith Head and Charles LeMaire), and Best Sound Recording (Thomas Moulton).

Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953).

Barbara McLean (born Palisades Park, NJ, 16 November 1903 – 28 March 1996) edited more than 60 films over 3 decades and was nominated for 7 Academy Awards: Les Misérables (1935), Lloyd’s of London (1936), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), The Rains Came (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Wilson (1944), and All About Eve (1950). She received the Oscar for Wilson.