Donn Cambern, the Oscar-nominated Romancing the Stone movie editor whose credit additionally embody Simple Rider, The Final Image Present and Ghostbusters II and was a longtime president of the Movement Image Editors Guild, died Wednesday, his household advised the guild. He was 93.
Born on October 9, 1929, in Los Angeles, Cambern got here from a showbiz household. His father was within the music-publishing enterprise, and his mom performed harp on film soundtracks together with Prime Hat for the RKO Footage orchestra. He graduated from UCLA in 1952 and landed a gig at Disney as a messenger.
He started his profession in Nineteen Sixties tv, serving as music editor for episodes of I Spy, That Woman and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir together with scores of episodes of each The Andy Griffith Present and its spinoff Gomer Pyle, USMC.
Cambern pivoted to options by the late ’60s, and amongst his first tasks was Simple Rider, the 1969 counterculture road-trip traditional starring Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson and its director, Dennis Hopper. After modifying the Nicholson-helmed Drive, He Stated, his subsequent gig was Peter Bogdanovich’s 1970 Greatest Image Oscar nominee The Final Image Present.
Cambern went on to edit movies by such big-name administrators as Paul Mazursky (Blume in Love, Willie & Phil, Tempest), Robert Clever (The Hindenburg), John Cassavetes (Huge Bother) and Ivan Reitman (Twins, Ghostbusters II), together with Robert Zemeckis on Romancing the Stone, for which Cambern landed the movie’s solely Oscar nom. He additionally labored twice with David Sternberg and a number of other instances with Hal Needham, modifying his Burt Reynolds starrers together with Hooper, Cannonball Run II and Paternity.
Different modifying credit embody The Bodyguard, Rookie of the Yr, Main League II, Harry and the Hendersons and Richard Pryor’s JoJo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.
Alongside the best way, Cambern was elected president of MPSE — IATSE Native 700 — in 1992 and served within the put up till 2001.
“Donn was a kind of uncommon sorts of people that was cherished by everybody who got here into contact with him, together with all of us on the guild,” stated Cathy Repola, MPSE’s Nationwide Government Director. “Throughout his years serving as president of the guild, he was instrumental in initiating and steering us by way of important adjustments which have finally benefitted the entire members. We’re perpetually grateful to him.”
Cambern additionally served as a longtime Governor for the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences’ Editors Department and was a VP of the Academy for a number of years. He additionally taught modifying at American Movie Institute.
