Robert Swink(1918-2000)
- Editor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Editorial Department
Robert E. Swink, a top-notch editor favored by directors no less
scrupulous than William Wyler and Franklin J. Schaffner, first moved to Hollywood with his
family in 1927, and made the place his home for the rest of his life.
Following graduation from North Hollywood High in 1936, Swink turned
down a football scholarship in favor of an apprenticeship in film
editing at RKO, where he remained for years, barring a World War II
hitch in the US Army Special Services, editing training films.
Beginning in 1944, he was promoted to cutting feature films. In 1952
Swink moved over to Paramount, where he started out with William
Wyler's Carrie (1952), and shortly thereafter received his first Academy
Award nomination for Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953). In the three decades of steady
work to follow, he would edit pictures as various as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), The Best Man (1964),
Papillon (1973) and Three the Hard Way (1974), and receive two further Oscar nominations, for
Funny Girl (1968) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). As well, he served as second unit director on a
handful of films, though unlike his contemporary Robert Wise he did not
make the jump to director. He might have made an excellent one, judging
from the crackerjack pacing and faultless dramatic instinct evident
behind all the films he touched, and the respect he garnered from the
frequently demanding directors who repeatedly hired him. Meaning to
retire after completing Franklin Schaffner's Sphinx (1981) in 1981, Swink was
coaxed out of retirement to supervise the editing of the finally
unreleased feature "And They're Off." He returned to work one final
time: as the favorite editor of director Schaffner (they had had five
prior collaborations), he was the logical choice to assemble the
footage for Welcome Home (1989), as Schaffner had died before the post-production
phase.