Verna Fields

Who was Verna Fields?

Verna Fields was an American film editor, film and television sound editor, educator, and entertainment industry executive. In the first phase of her career, from 1954 through to about 1970, Fields mostly worked on smaller projects that gained little recognition. She was the sound editor for several television shows in the 1950s. She worked on independent films, on government-supported documentaries of the 1960s, and on some minor studio films such as Peter Bogdanovich's first film, Targets. For several years in the late 1960s, she was a film instructor at the University of Southern California. Her one major studio film, El Cid, led to her only industry recognition in this phase of her career, which was the 1962 Golden Reel award for sound editing.

Fields came into prominence as a film editor and industry executive during the 'New Hollywood' era. She had established close ties with the directors Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg early in their careers, and became known as their "mother cutter"; the term "cutter" is an informal variation of "film editor".