William Hornbeck

American motion picture editor, who, in 1977, was voted by 100 of his peers as the best his profession had ever produced. Hornbeck began his distinguished career in the industry, aged fourteen, as a film winder with the New York Motion Picture Company on 42nd Street and Broadway. In 1916, he joined Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company and worked for twelve years as chief editor on numerous two-reel comedies. In 1934, Hornbeck went to England and became supervising editor for Alexander Korda's London Films, where he worked on such classics as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Things to Come (1936) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He was known to be a meticulous craftsman, always wearing white gloves on both hands when handling celluloid. In 1941, Hornbeck returned to America to collaborate with Frank Capra on the 'Why We Fight' series of documentaries in the Army Signal Corps Photographic Unit. After the war, he edited Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and MGM's State of the Union (1948). From 1949 to 1953, he was under contract to Paramount and won an Academy Award in for A Place in the Sun (1951). His other outstanding contributions during this decade include Shane (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and Giant (1956), in which his editing effectively disguised James Dean's untimely demise prior to completion of the picture. After briefly free-lancing, Hornbeck joined Universal as supervising editor in 1960 and remained in that capacity until his retirement in 1976.