Spencer, Dorothy (b. 1909)

American film editor. Born in Covington, Kentucky, on February 2, 1909.

Selected filmography:

Married in Hollywood (1929); The Case Against Mrs. Ames (1936); Blockade (1938); Trade Winds (1939); Stagecoach (1939); Foreign Correspondent (1940); Sundown (1941); To Be or Not to Be (1942); Heaven Can Wait (1943); Lifeboat (1944); A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945); A Royal Scandal (1945); Dragonwyck (1946); Cluny Brown (1946); My Darling Clementine (1946); The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); That Lady in Ermine (1948); The Snake Pit (1948); Down to the Sea in Ships (1949); Three Came Home (1950); Under My Skin (1950); Fourteen Hours (1951); Decision Before Dawn (1951); Lydia Bailey (1952); Man on a Tightrope (1953); Night People (1954); Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954); Broken Lance (1954); Prince of Players (1955); Soldier of Fortune (1955); The Left Hand of God (1955); The Rains of Ranchipur (1955); The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956); A Hatful of Rain (1957); The Young Lions (1958); The Journey (1959); From the Terrace (1960); North to Alaska (1960); Wild in the Country (1961); Cleopatra (1963); Circus World (1964); Von Ryan's Express (1965); The Lost Command (1966); A Guide for the Married Man (1967); Valley of the Dolls (1967); Daddy's Gone a-Hunting (1969); Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971); Earthquake (1974); The Concord—Airport '79 (1979).

A film editor of extraordinary skill and longevity, Dorothy Spencer enjoyed a career that spanned five decades, and included such motion pictures as an adaptation of Betty Smith 's novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an adaptation of Mary Jane Ward 's novel The Snake Pit (1948), as well as The Left Hand of God (1955) and A Hatful of Rain (1957). Spencer collaborated with some of Hollywood's best directors, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, and Elia Kazan, and received four Academy Award nominations: for Stagecoach (1939), Decision Before Dawn (1951), Cleopatra (1963), and Earthquake (1974).