These days many directors sweat over every frame of film at the editing stage. But John Huston, one of the great swashbucklers of Hollywood cinema, could not be bothered with such niceties. When he was finished filming, he was finished. During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s it was often left to Russell Lloyd to pick up the pieces, literally, and turn Huston’s raw footage into a finished film.
He edited ten of Huston’s movies, most notably Moby Dick (1956), Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975), for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
Born in Swansea in 1916, Hugh Russell Lloyd got his first job in the film industry as projectionist at a local cinema. He wrote to all the British film studios of the time, looking for a more creative position.
He hoped to work as a cameraman, but ended up in the cutting room at Alexander Korda’s London Films. He helped to edit such classics as Rembrandt and Things to Come, both of which came out in 1936.
Promotion was relatively swift and he received his first credit as editor the following year on the crime drama The Squeaker. About the same time he also edited The Green Cockatoo, another crime film, which starred John Mills and was based on a story by Graham Greene, but its release was delayed for a couple of years.
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During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy and was seconded to the Crown Film Unit, where he cut Close Quarters (1943), an acclaimed documentary about life on a submarine.
Back at London Films, he was second unit director on Anna Karenina (1948), with Vivien Leigh, and co-director of The Last Day of Dolwyn (1949), a Welsh period melodrama, with a young Richard Burton. He also edited both. He directed some sequences in Walt Disney’s Treasure Island (1950), with Robert Newton as Long John Silver, but subsequently he concentrated on editing.
His career was boosted after meeting Huston on Moby Dick. Huston was without his regular editor. Lloyd went to Wales, where Huston was working with model whales, and presented himself for the job. They hit it off and it was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.
Working for Huston, Lloyd got the chance to edit scenes of Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn in The Unforgiven (1960), Brando in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Paul Newman in The Mackintosh Man (1973) and Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King (1975).
It was Lloyd and Huston’s last film together, a classic piece of story-telling, classically edited, without flashy jump-cuts, and now acknowledged widely as a masterpiece.
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Lloyd went on to edit several more films, including the 1979 remake of The Lady Vanishes and Absolute Beginners (1986), a box-office disaster, which, along with Revolution and The Mission, marked the end of the glory days for Goldcrest Films. He also worked uncredited on the infamous Caligula (1979).
In the 1940s Lloyd was married to the British star Rosamund John. After they divorced, she married the Labour politician John Silkin. Lloyd also remarried.
Russell Lloyd, film editor, was born on January 16, 1916. He died on January 21, 2008, aged 92