2023 Governors Awards profile: Film editor Carol Littleton to receive Honorary Oscar

Matthew Stewart
·3 min read
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Since the establishment of the Best Film Editing Oscar category in 1935, the film academy has recognized the work of nearly four dozen women in the profession and bestowed the award upon 13 of them. Nominee Margaret Booth (“Mutiny on the Bounty,” 1936) and winner Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia,” 1963) later received honorary Oscars for career achievement, and they currently stand as the only editors to have done so. This fall, however, they will be joined by Carol Littleton, who has been instrumental to the art of cinematic storytelling for close to 50 years.

Along with Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, and Michelle Satter, Littleton’s life in film will be celebrated at the upcoming 14th annual Governors Awards. The 80-year-old has earned this honor because her “career in film editing serves as a model for those who come after her.” Since starting out as a commercial producer in the 1970s, she has edited more than three dozen films in collaboration with some of the most revered directors of all time.

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After establishing herself as an editor with 1975’s “Legacy,” Littleton began a working relationship with Oscar-nominated writer-director Lawrence Kasdan that spanned three decades and nine films, including “Body Heat” (1981), “The Big Chill” (1983), “The Accidental Tourist” (1988), and “Wyatt Earp” (1994). She has also cut four films helmed by Jonathan Demme and worked twice each with Karen Arthur, Robert Benton, Jeremiah Chechik, and Ken Kwapis.

In 1983, Littleton received an Oscar notice for “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” which held the record for all-time highest-grossing film for the next decade. She is also known for her frequent collaborations with her husband of 51 years, cinematographer and former academy president John Bailey. The two have worked together on 15 projects, including three Kasdan films and Bailey’s own directorial efforts “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” (1991) and “China Moon” (1994).

As an occasional television editor, Littleton has won a Primetime Emmy for “Tuesdays with Morrie” (2000) and an American Cinema Editors Award for “All the Way” (2017). In 2016, she became the ninth female recipient of the ACE Career Achievement Award, also following Booth and Coates. At different points in her career, she has held the positions of ACE vice president, Motion Picture Editors Guild president, and governor of the academy’s film editing branch.

An honorary Oscar is given “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the academy.” At least one of these awards has been conferred during or prior to all but 10 of the 95 Oscars ceremonies. Since 2009, they have been presented at a separate ceremony that takes place several months before the same year’s Oscars. Littleton and her fellow honorees will collect their trophies on November 18, 2023.

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