Barbara McLean

Barbara McLean
Photograph by Howard Jean from Vogue (1952).
Born	Barbara Pollut (1903-11-16)November 16, 1903 Palisades Park, New Jersey
Died	March 28, 1996(1996-03-28) (aged 92) Newport Beach, California
Spouse(s)	Robert D. Webb (1951–1990)
Awards	Best Editing 1944 Wilson

Barbara McLean (November 16, 1903 – March 28, 1996) was an American film editor with 62 film credits. In the period Darryl F. Zanuck was dominant at the 20th Century Fox Studio, from the 1930s through the 1960s, McLean was the Studio's most conspicuous editor and ultimately the head of its editing department. She won the Academy Award for Film Editing for the film Wilson (1944). She was nominated for the same award another six occasions, with All About Eve (1950) being among them. Her total of seven nominations for Best Editing Oscar was not surpassed until 2012 by Michael Kahn.

She had a extensive collaboration with the director Henry King over twenty-nine films, including Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Her impact was summarized by Adrian Dannatt in 1996: McLean was "a revered editor who perhaps single-handedly established women as vital creative figures in an otherwise patriarchal industry."

McLean was born in Palisades Park, New Jersey; she was the daughter of Charles Pollut, who ran a film laboratory. As a child she worked on release prints from the adjacent studio of E. K. Lincoln, who was an early producer of films. No doubt the early experience in processing of film was helpful to McLean when she became an assistant film editor, but McLean later commented that her musical training as a child also was very important.

In 1924 she married J. Gordon McLean, who was a film projectionist and later, a cameraman. After marrying, the couple moved to Los Angeles, California. McLean found work as an assistant editor at First National Studio. She subsequently joined Twentieth Century Pictures, where initially, she assisted the editor Alan McNeil. In 1933 she received her first editing credit for Gallant Lady; her work on Les Misérables (directed by Richard Boleslawski, 1935) was nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing.