Verna Fields

Verna Fields is an American film editor, and television sound editor along with many other job roles. Fields mainly worked on small projects in the early years of her career (1954-1970), so it would her gain recognition and get people interested in her work. Throughout the 1950s she worked for a number of television shows and worked on independent films like ‘The Savage Eye’ in 1959, and also on some minor studio films such as Peter Bogdanocivh’s first film.

During the ‘New Hollywood’ era Fields came into importance as a film editor and industry executive, where she had created close bonds with directors such as Peter Bogdanovich and Steven Spielberg in there early careers. This was when Fields was given the name ‘Mother Cutter’. Films with a great success such as Jaws(1975) and Graffiti(1973) brought Fields a level of recognition that appears to be very unique among many film editors.  Jaws was an enormously profitable film and was given the tittle of ‘Summer Blockbuster’. The excellence contributions that fields gave to the film were widely acknowledged which then led to her receiving an Academy Award and an American Cinema Editors award for best editing for the film. Within a year of the film’s release she had been appointed as Vice President for feature production at Universal Studios, and was then among the first woman to enter upper level management in the entertainment industry.