He cut many distinctive features, including ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’, ‘The Last Detail’, ‘Shampoo’, ‘Bound for Glory’ and ‘Heaven Can Wait’.
Robert C. Jones, the acclaimed film editor who uses classic forms such as Guess who’s coming to dinner, Love story, The last detail and Bound for glory and a screenplay Oscar shared for Came home, died. He was 84.
Jones died Monday at his home in Los Angeles after a long illness, his daughter Leslie Jones, an Oscar-nominated film editor, just like her father, told The Hollywood Reporter. She calls him her mentor, ‘a gentle and generous man and a comic genius. He really was the sweetest guy. ‘
His father, Harmon Jones, was also an Oscar-nominated film editor, honored for his work on Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement (1947).
Robert C. Jones has enjoyed regular collaborations with directors Stanley Kramer, Hal Ashby, Arthur Hiller and Warren Beatty throughout his career, and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by American Cinema Editors in 2014.
After retiring from Hollywood in 2001, he spent the next 15 years as an admired professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
The Los Angeles resident received early Oscar names for his work with Kramer It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967). In between, he works with the director Ship of Fools (1965).
For Ashby, director of the film editor, Jones cut The last detail (1973), Shampoo (1975) and Bound for glory (1976) – the one led to his third editorial of the Oscar award – and received his original screenplay Oscar, shared with Waldo Salt and Nancy Dowd, for Came home (1978). He also did work on the screenplay for Be there (1979), but was denied credit.
He performed eight functions for Hiller: Tobruk (1967), The tiger makes out (1967), Love story (1970), Man of La Mancha (1972), The crazy world of Julius Vrooder (1974), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), Married to it (1991) and The baby (1992).
And for Beatty, the director, he edits Heaven can wait (1978), Bulworth (1998) and Love relationship (1994).
Robert Clifford Jones, born March 30, 1936, left college and went to work in the ship’s room at 20th Century Fox. “I seized it without knowing what I was doing,” he told Debra Kaufman in 2014. CineMontage magazine.
Jones rose to the position of apprentice editor and assistant film editor, working on films such as Untamed (1955) and The long hot summer (1958). The work ‘was magic for me’, he said. “It opened my eyes to what my father did.”
He was drafted into the U.S. Army, but gained valuable experience during his 1958-60 training films and documentaries in Astoria, New York. Then, at home, he worked with Gene Fowler Jr. about John Cassavetes se A child waits (1963), produced by Kramer, and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Jones told Kaufman that he was editing a film “that just doesn’t work at all” when he asked the director if he wanted to leave for a few weeks, “he recalled. “I reconsidered and restructured it and worked on performances. He came back and said, ‘Have you ever considered being a writer? You just rewrote my movie with editing. A light bulb went off in my head, and I started writing. I learned to write through editing. ‘
Jones turned down an offer from Ashby to edit Came home, but when Salt was sidelined by a heart attack two months before production began, Jones came on board as a screenwriter. “It shocked me a lot to get an Oscar,” he said. “When I went on stage with Waldo and the author of the story, Nancy Dowd, it was the first time I met them.”
He said United Artists / Lorimar Productions awarded him to novelist Jerzy Kosinski Be there, but the WGA granted the only credit to Kosinski. “It was a dark day in my life,” he said. He concentrates on editing for the rest of his career.
His credits also included Ida Lupino’s The trouble with angels (1966), I love you, Alice B. Toklas! (1968), Josh Logan’s Paint your car (1969), Richard Fleischer The New Centurions (1972), Cisco Pike (1971), Tony Scott’s Days of thunderstorms (1990), Harold Becker’s Town hall (1996), Mal in Alabama (1999) and Unconditional love (2002), his last movie.
His daughter, who received her Oscar nomination for Terrence Malick’s The thin red line (1998), helped her father with films such as See No Evil, Hear No Evil and The baby early in her career. Like her father, she did not go to a film school and had no formal training in editing.
“But what I learned is that editing does not always require a specific skill set. He taught me that talent is rather guided by a sense of compassion, integrity and the search for truth and authenticity. He has everything and more. had.”
As a USC, Jones not only “taught students to edit, but supported and even helped strengthen their passion for filmmaking and storytelling in general,” said Elizabeth Daley, dean of the School of Cinematic Arts, in a statement. .
“Bob was known for being patient and kind and for a great sense of humor. He involved students in the corridors of the school, joking with them and literally a source of joy. He was not just a mentor for students, but also his colleagues from the faculty and staff members. He was undoubtedly one of the school’s most beloved professors. ‘
In addition to his daughters Leslie and Hayley, survivors are also his wife of 59 years, Sylvia; grandchildren Sophia, Henry, Sammy and Phoebe; sons-in-law John and Joshua; a sister Polly.
Leslie noted that her father made a “Grandpa Bob” series of video sketches for his grandchildren in which Grandpa Bob went to space, stole donuts and explained the nervous system. The funny videos also went viral around the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Rhett Bartlett contributed to this report.