Film editor Dede Allen died 17 April 2010, after suffering a stroke on the 14th. Born Dorothea Corothers Allen on 3 December 1923 in Cleveland, Ohio, she was nominated for three film editing Oscars, for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Reds (1981), and Wonder Boys (2000).
Her mother was an actress, and she knew early on that she wanted a career in film. She studied architecture, weaving, and pottery at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and then landed her first job in film: as a messenger at Columbia Pictures. During World War II, she got a job in the studio’s sound effects department, and starting editing commercial and industrial films. Her first feature film work came in the late 1950s.
The New York Times says her work “revolutionized images with a staccato style that gave a story a sense of constant motion,” and that she “was one of the first in her profession to give sound as much importance as images. She was also among the first to command a percentage of a movie’s profits.”
In 1992, she took an eight-year break from editing when she became the head of post production at Warner Bros.
Her genre film work includes: The Final Cut (2004), The Addams Family (1991), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), The Wiz (1978), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), and Terror from the Year 5000 (1958).
Allen is survived by her husband of 63 years, Stephen E. Fleischman (a retired documentary writer and producer, and television executive), her son Tom Fleischman (a sound recording mixer), her daughter Ramey Ward, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.