Cotton Warburton

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Cotton Warburton
San Diego, California, U.S.
DiedJune 21, 1982(1982-06-21) (aged 70)
, U.S.
OccupationsFilm editor


College football career
USC Trojans – No. 13
PositionQuarterback
Career history
CollegeUSC (1932–1934)
High schoolSan Diego High School
Career highlights and awards
College Football Hall of Fame (1975)

Irvine "Cotton" Eugene Warburton (October 8, 1911 – June 21, 1982) was an American college football quarterback (1933) who became a film and television editor with sixty feature film credits.[1][2] He worked for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and for the Walt Disney Studios, and is probably best known for his Academy Award-winning editing of Mary Poppins (1964).[3]

Biography

Warburton was born in 1911, in

San Diego, California, to Margaret Warburton. His siblings were Leland S., Los Angeles City Council member in 1945–53; Milton, Lawrence and David.[4]

Career in sports

Warburton attended

All-American quarterback in 1933. Warburton was the quarterback during a winning streak that lasted for 27 games, which remained unsurpassed at USC until 1980.[1] Cotton was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1975.[6] Warburton's teammate Aaron Rosenberg
was also elected to the Hall of Fame, and also had a successful career in the film industry as a director and producer.

Hollywood career

Dance among the chimney pots from Mary Poppins (1964).

Following his graduation from the

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, where he remained for 19 years.[1] As was common in the studio era, his first editing credit came after about eight years with the studio,[7] and was for the Laurel and Hardy film Air Raid Wardens (1943). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for Crazylegs (1953), a film about Elroy Hirsch's football career; Robert Niemi has suggested that the nomination acknowledged Warburton's success in "weaving documentary footage of Hirsch on the playing field into the film proper."[8]
Shortly after this film, Warburton left MGM.

By 1956 Warburton was an editor for the

Robert Stevenson. Their first film was The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). At the 37th Academy Awards, he won for best film editing for the "spectacularly successful" Mary Poppins (1964), which also earned Stevenson an Oscar nomination as best director.[9] He also won for best film editor at the 15th American Cinema Editors Awards.[10] Critic Drew Casper particularly notes Warburton's editing of the film's "chimney pot" musical sequence (see clip to the right).[11] In total, Stevenson and Warburton collaborated on nine films in the 1960s and 1970s; their last film together was Herbie Rides Again (1974). Warburton retired from editing after The Cat from Outer Space (1978), a Disney film directed by Norman Tokar.[3]

Warburton was a member of the American Cinema Editors.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Cotton Warburton of USC is dead at 70". The Los Angeles Times. June 22, 1982. p. D1. Paid online access.
  2. ^ "Irvine Warburton, Film Editor". The New York Times. June 22, 1982. Associated Press obituary from June 21, 1982, and published by the New York Times on June 22.
  3. ^
    IMDb
  4. ^ "Obituaries". The Los Angeles Times. May 6, 1961. p. C-17. Paid online access.
  5. ^ "Irvine "Cotton" Warburton". San Diego Hall of Champions. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
  6. ^ Cotton Warburton at the College Football Hall of Fame
  7. ^ Zone, Ray (May–June 2006). "Recalling the Esteemed O'Steen". Editors' Guild Magazine. 23 (3). Archived from the original on May 20, 2008. Retrieved Feb 10, 2008.
  8. .
  9. ISBN 9780684804637. The spectacular success of Mary Poppins, which was the highest grossing film of 1964 (significantly outperforming its closest rivals My Fair Lady (George Cukor) and Goldfinger
    (Guy Hamilton)), pushed company profits to record highs of $11 million in 1965 and $12 million in 1966.
  10. ^ "Warburton of Culver City in Running for Oscar". Evening Vanguard. March 27, 1965. p. 5. Retrieved March 24, 2024.
  11. . Disney was the leader, his musical fantasies mixing animation and truly marvelous f/x with real-life action for children and the child in the adult. Mary Poppins (1964) was his plum. ... the story was elemental, even trite. But utmost sophistication (the chimney pot sequence crisply cut by Oscared "Cotton" Warburton) and high-level invention (a tea party on the ceiling, a staircase of black smoke to the city's top) characterized its handling.
  12. .

Further reading