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and working with him." Years later, after Burnett had become one of the most distinguished editors in the industry, Cukor called on him to edit his acclaimed television film "Love Among the Ruins" (1975), an historical romance starring Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. The two worked one last time on "Rich and Famous." "In a lot of companies, the department heads came to dailies. Not with George. George said, 'This is my editor's and my time,'" Burnett told CinemaEditor. "There was one thing that George was very strict on. George demanded that you stayed on the person talking until he or she finished their sentence. If the line was, 'I think we ought to go to town right now,' as soon as 'now' was over, you made your cut. If there was a little reaction on the other side, you would use it, and if not, the other person would then say, 'No, let's go in about two hours.' A lot of people think that if you overlap the last part of that line over the incoming person's face, it speeds up and smooths out the cut and the reaction and the tempo of the dialogue. A couple times, it worked better if I did that because of something technical. And every time George caught it, he said, 'John, you know better.'" Throughout his career, Burnett nur- tured longtime relationships with directors and producers, including Blake Edwards, for whom he cut, uncredited, portions of "The Great Race" (1965), edited by Ralph E. Winters, ACE and later, once he had become an editor, "Wild Rovers" and "A Fine Mess" (1986), the latter with Robert Pergament. Burnett received his first offi- cial opportunity to edit thanks to director Robert Ellis Miller, who hired Burnett to cut his much-admired adaptation of Carson McCullers's "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunt- er" (1968) and promptly signed him to a multi-picture contract (from which he was later released so he could work elsewhere). Because of his love of horses and ranch- ing, Burnett considered "Wild Rovers" to be among his favorite projects. "He was a Western and cowboy kind of guy," John Earl Burnett said. "It was just a good, fun shoot. Blake only did eight-hour days. We went fishing with Karl Malden. We went to the O.K. Corral with Tom Skerritt. [Edwards's wife] Julie Andrews had '101 Dalmatians' flown in. It was almost like a little family." Burnett also edited numerous films for producer Ray Stark, including "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1970) starring Barbra Strei- sand and George Segal, and "The Sunshine Boys" (1975) starring Walter Matthau and George Burns. And, after cutting his teeth on "Gypsy" and "My Fair Lady," Burnett again found himself assembling musical numbers on a pair of New Hollywood spins on the genre, the box-office smash "Grease" (1978) and its sequel, "Grease 2" (1982). Having reached the apex of his career, Burnett stood for and won the position of president of the Editors Guild, where his ac- complishments included negotiating a new contract that led to a 50 percent compound- ed increase in wages over three-and-a-half years and the guarantee of single-card, up-front credits for picture editors, which was far from the norm at that time. "We want a card up-front to match the camera- men," Burnett told CineMontage, recalling his conversation with MCA Universal's Sid Sheinberg and Lew Wasserman amid the contract negotiations. "We don't want to be in the technical credits." He served in various capacities with the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, including as Executive Secretary (1983-1984) and on the Board of Governors (1975-1985). Burnett's later credits are highlighted by his work on two gargantuan historical mini-series, "The Winds of War" (1983) and "War and Remembrance" (1988-89) both based on equally epic-scaled novels by Herman Wouk. With Peter Zinner, ACE, Burnett received an ACE Eddie and a Prime- time Emmy for various parts of "War and Remembrance." In 2003, he was honored with the ACE Career Achievement Award. By then, Burnett had retired to his ranch in Lincoln, Calif. In the 1990s, Burnett began stepping back from feature films and transi- tioned to episodic television in order to care for his wife Rosemarie, then ailing with can- cer. Following Rosemarie's death in 1998, Burnett remarried to Marjolane, known as Margie, who had been Rosemarie's best friend and the maid of honor in John and Rosemarie's marriage. "It was a good thing, because they had everything in common," John Earl Burnett said. Margie died in 2018. John F. Burnett is survived by his broth- er David and his sons with Rosemarie, John Earl Burnett and Stephen F. Burnett. ■ — Peter Tonguette PETER C. FRANK JANUARY 17, 1943–AUGUST 19, 2024 53 W I N T E R Q 4 I S S U E I N M E M O R I A M Like any legal drama worth its salt, Sidney Lumet's 1982 masterpiece "The Verdict" takes into account multiple and conflicting perspectives. The film centers on a flailing and aging Boston attorney named Frank Galvin (Paul Newman), who wrests himself from the grips of alcoholism to argue a medical malpractice case. What follows not only takes place in a courtroom but unfolds in the manner of a court case: What happened to the now-co- matose patient? What was the culpability of the physician? What was the complicity, moral or otherwise, of the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the hospital? The film provides increasingly clear answers to these questions, but only after Lumet and screenwriter David Mamet have allowed a fair hearing to all sides. Fittingly, "The Verdict" was the debut feature film as picture editor of Peter C. Frank, ACE who, throughout his career both inside and outside the film industry, sought to balance competing viewpoints. This gift