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William Nelson Austin ACE (1903–1993) was a Canadian-born American film editor. His prolific career spanned 45 years and over 150 productions. He mostly worked on B-movies of various genres, especially westerns. Another staple were comedies: He was the editor of more than thirty films featuring "The Bowery Boys". His editing skills were recognized with an Academy Award nomination in 1953, for the war drama Flat Top.

Life and Career
William Austin was born on January 28, 1903, in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.

He entered the film industry at age 17, starting out as a camera assistant. From 1922 onwards, Austin worked as an editor for small production companies in Hollywood. Towards the end of the silent era he teamed up with director/producer Robert J. Horner to churn out a dozen westerns in just two years (1928–1929).

Starting with his first sound film, South of Sonora by Jacques Jaccard (1930), Austin diversified his collaborations, working with nearly 20 different directors in the course of the 1930s, including several productions by Harry S. Webb, David Selman, and Leon Barsha. Two of Barsha's films that were released in 1938, Special Inspector and Convicted, featured 19-year old Rita Hayworth as the female lead – a year before her breakthrough as an actress. Both films were crime dramas, which signaled that Austin was beginning to branch out to other genres. Westerns still dominated his works of the 1930's, but there was also a sports-themed romance called Deception (1932), the exploitation/horror film Maniac (1934), and contemporary dramas like Lucky Corrigan or Tugboat Princess (both released in 1936). Films like the last two, or the Rita Haworth launch pads from 1938, are sometimes called "quota quickies", since they were shot quickly and cheaply across the border in Canada, so as to meet the British quota requirements of the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927.

In 1943, William Austin was in charge of editing his first major studio production, the Sherlock Holmes film adaptation The Spider Woman, produced by Universal, with Basil Rathbone as Holmes. His next project was the comedy/crime movie Shadow of Suspicion (1944), which was directed by William Beaudine. It kicked off the most enduring and productive director/editor collaboration of Austin's career. He and Beaudine would go on to make over 40 films together.

After The Spider Woman, Austin had mostly returned to working for smaller production companies again, but nevertheless in 1953 received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Editing category for Flat Top.

Soon after the founding of the American Cinema Editors in 1950, William Austin was initiated as a member, as is signaled by the A.C.E. after his name in almost all film credits from Crazy Over Horses  (1951) up to The Great Sioux Massacre (1965).

In 1953, Austin also began working for television productions, including several episodes of the TV series I'm the Law, as well as The Abbott and Costello Show, where he edited nine episodes of season two. He mostly returned to cinema after that, but did edit one episode each of The Barbara Stanwyck Show  and the TV series Ben Casey in 1961.

The final film in Austin's filmography, Legend of the Northwest, was released in 1978, when Austin was already 75. But it had in fact been shot back in 1962, so it wasn't the last project Austin worked on. The film was directed by actor Rand Brooks, in his first and only excursion as a director and producer. According to Brooks' obituary in the Los Angeles Times, it was not released for many years, because it "became tied up in litigation when Brooks' business manager was charged with numerous counts of forgery and graft involving several clients." So Austin's final works as an editor are actually four episodes of the TV series Tarzan, that were broadcast between December 1967 and March 1968.

On Dezember 28, 1993, William Austin died in Los Angeles at the age of 90.

Filmography
This filmography is sourced from the American Film Institute catalog, IMDb, and the British Film Institute. Discrepancies between the sources are mentioned in the notes. Some running time durations vary considerably, perhaps due to different edit versions in circulation.

According to the American Cinema Editors Anniversary Book, Austin was already working as a film editor from 1922 onwards. But his first entry in any of the databases is from 1928. Since it was not unusual during the silent era to leave out editors in film credits, there might be quite a few early projects missing from the list below.

Accolades

 * 1953: Nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Editing for Flat Top.