Robert C. Jones, Esteemed Movie Editor and Oscar-Successful ‘Coming Home’ Screenwriter, Dies at 84

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Robert C. Jones, the acclaimed film editor driving 1960s and ’70s classics “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and “Enjoy Tale” who garnered a screenplay Academy Award for the war drama “Coming Residence,” has died. He was 84.

His daughter, Leslie Jones — who is also an Oscar-nominated film editor — verified to Variety that Jones died on Feb. 1 adhering to a lengthy sickness.

“My Father had a large influence on my possess enhancing job with whom I labored on numerous films as his assistant,” Leslie claimed in a statement. “Like Bob I did not go to movie school and experienced no official training in enhancing. But what I acquired was that enhancing does not generally need a unique talent set. He taught me that talent as an alternative is guided by a feeling of compassion, and integrity, and the look for for reality and authenticity. He experienced all that and far more.”

All through his job, Jones collaborated with acclaimed administrators such as Hal Ashby, Arthur Hiller and Warren Beatty. Early on in his occupation, the Los Angeles indigenous scored Academy Award noms for his function on comedy movie sequence “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and the Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier-starring “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Jones also cut films these kinds of as 1973’s “The Final Depth,” 1975’s passionate comedy “Shampoo” and 1976’s musical drama “Bound for Glory,” which scored him his third Oscar editing nomination.

Apart from enhancing, he also penned numerous scripts. In 1978, he attained a very best first screenplay Oscar for “Coming Residence,” an award he shared with co-writers Waldo Salt and Nancy Dowd. Jones served as a co-screenwriter with novelist Jerzy Kosinski on the 1979 film “Being There,” which Jones’ daughter, Leslie, states her father nearly rewrote. Nonetheless, Jones was in the end denied credit history by the Writers Guild of America, immediately after which he concentrated on his editing job.

Born on March 30, 1936, Jones dropped out of school and commenced operating in the shipping area at 20th Century Fox. Eventually, he labored his way up to come to be apprentice film editor and assistant movie editor, doing the job on films these types of as 1955’s “Untamed” and the romantic drama “The Prolonged, Sizzling Summer” starring Paul Newman. Jones was drafted into the U.S. Military but even now honed his craft by editing teaching films and documentaries in New York from 1958 to 1960. His father, Harmon Jones, was also an Oscar-nominated movie editor, honored for his operate on Elia Kazan’s black-and-white pic “Gentleman’s Settlement.”

Jones retired from the business in 2001 and spent the next 15 many years as an admired professor at the USC Faculty of Cinematic Arts. In 2014, he was introduced with a lifetime accomplishment award from the American Cinema Editors.

“In addition to teaching students to edit he supported, and even served enhance, their enthusiasm for filmmaking and storytelling in general. Bob was identified for getting client and kind, and for a terrific sense of humor,” reads a tribute to Jones on the USC College of Cinematic Arts web-site. “He engaged students in the School’s hallways, joking with them and actually remaining a supply of pleasure. He wasn’t just a mentor to pupils, but also his colleagues on the school, and associates of the personnel. Devoid of a doubt he was a person of the School’s most cherished professors.”

He is survived by his spouse Sylvia, daughters Leslie and Hayley Sussman, sister Polly and grandchildren Sophia, Henry, Sammy and Phoebe. Donations in his memory can be designed to the Academy Gold Rising method.