Margaret Booth

In a career lasting seven decades, Booth was most associated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Early life

Margaret Booth was born on January 16, 1898, in Los Angeles to Edward J. Booth, Sr. and Margaret A. Boland. Her older brother was Elmer Booth, who was an actor for D. W. Griffith and the breadwinner for the family. On June 16, 1915, Elmer was riding with actor George Siegmann in a car driven by Tod Browning. Due to the heavy fog that day, Browning did not see the rear lamp of an oncoming train. Browning's car was hit by a train of the Salt Lake Railroad, killing Elmer instantly. Browning and Siegmann however survived but suffered serious injuries. At Elmer's funeral, Griffith delivered an eulogy and approached Margaret with a job offer as a film joiner (also known as a negative cutter) to provide income for the family. Margaret never forgave Browning for her brother's death.

1915–1921: Editing for D. W. Griffith

By this time, Booth had graduated from Los Angeles High School. Griffith hired Booth on a salary for ten dollars a week as one of several female editors for his studio. Booth remembered years later, "...in the old days we had to cut negative by eye. We matched the print to the negative without any edge numbers. We had to match the action. Sometimes there'd be a tiny pinpoint on the negative, and then you knew you were right, but it was very tedious work." One of the films she worked on was Orphans of the Storm (1921) starring Lillian Gish. After a few months, Booth worked for Paramount Pictures' editing department, assembling the tinted sections for release prints.

1921–1938: Editing at MGM

In 1921, Booth began working for Louis B. Mayer at his namesake film production studio. Mayer had hired John M. Stahl when Edward Small, who was Stahl's publicity agent, inquired why there were no hired Jewish directors. Booth observed Stahl in the editing room. Because Stahl was a perfectionist, he would shoot multiple takes of several scenes and leave outtake footage literally on the cutting room floor. At the end of the day, Booth assembled the outtakes and stayed overnight to practice her cutting techniques. One day, Stahl was frustrated when he couldn't make a scene work. After he left, Booth took her own approach; when Stahl screened her work, he was impressed and hired her immediately as his editorial assistant. For Stahl, she edited The Gay Deceiver (1926), Lovers? (1927), and In Old Kentucky (1927).

Stahl personally mentored Booth on the craft of film editing, explaining the exact purpose for his editing decisions. Booth reflected, "He taught the value of a scene. When a scene drops or doesn't drop, and when it sustains. You have to feel this, intrusively, in your work." In 1924, Mayer merged with Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures to form a new conglomerate film production studio known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Stahl stayed with MGM for several years, but when he left the studio in 1927, he asked Booth to join him but she declined. Booth stated, "I went on to working at M-G-M, mostly with [Irving] Thalberg—the greatest man who was ever in pictures. M-G-M was like home to me." Her editing skills were appreciated by Thalberg, MGM's head of production, that he asked her if she would consider directing. However, she was not interested. Regardless, according to film historian Cari Beauchamp, Thalberg was the first known person to call cutters "film editors," starting with Booth. Her first official editing credit was for the 1929 part-talkie film The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

At MGM, Booth edited several films starring Greta Garbo, including Camille (1936). She also edited Wise Girls (1929), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), and Romeo and Juliet (1936). Booth received her only competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing on Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

1939–1968: Supervising editor of MGM

In 1936, Thalberg had unexpectedly died and Mayer assumed the position as production head. Three years later, in 1939, Mayer appointed Booth to be the studio's supervising film editor. Booth stated, "They liked me because I was fast. I was always very fast cutting everything I did. And boy, was I tough." As the supervising editor, she did no actual film editing herself but instead hired the personnel and reviewed the dailies for each film, overseeing classics such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Ben-Hur (1959). In his 1995 book Making Movies, director Sidney Lumet called Booth "a remarkable person. She was bright and tireless, and she loved movies. I don't know if she had any other life." He told one story while filming The Hill (1965) in England, in which she arrived on location and asked to see a rough-cut version, promptly at eight during the following morning. A screening was arranged for her, with Lumet and Thelma Connell, the editor for The Hill, present. When the screening was over, she asked for two minutes of the film to be cut so it would be under two hours. Lumet pushed back and after two more screenings, Booth relented. Following the third screening, Lumet consoled a despondent Booth, who personally felt none of the new studio executives knew or care about filmmaking. She remained in her position until she retired in 1968.

In its 1982 article about Booth's long tenureship, the Village Voice describes her as "the final authority of every picture the studio made for 30 years."

1969–1985: Editing for Ray Stark

After leaving MGM, Booth was hired by Ray Stark as the supervising editor for his company, Rastar Productions. She supervised the editing for several films, including The Way We Were (1973), The Sunshine Boys (1975), The Goodbye Girl (1977), California Suite (1978), and Annie (1982). She was last credited as an executive producer for The Slugger's Wife (1985) when she was 87.

In 1977, Booth was awarded an Academy Honorary Award denoting her for "62 years of exceptionally distinguished service to the motion picture industry as a film editor." In 1983, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. In 1990, Booth was also honored with the American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award.^{[citation needed]} On her centennial birthday, in 1998, Booth was honored with a gala commemorating her seven-decade contributions to the film industry at the Sheraton Universal Hotel, hosted by the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Death and legacy

On October 28, 2002, Booth, at age 104, died from complications after suffering a stroke. She is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood California. In their obituary for Booth, the British newspaper The Guardian stated, "All the filmmakers had to go through her in order to have a final editing of sound and vision approved," while describing her approach:

She was a pioneer of the classic editing style, the so-called "invisible cutting", the aim of which was to make the transition from one image to another as seamless as possible, so the audience was almost unaware of the flow of shots within a sequence. Narrative was dominant, maintaining a continuity of time and space, and matching cuts to action.

• List of centenarians (actors, filmmakers and entertainers)