Viola Lawrence
American film editor (1894-1973)
Viola Mallory Lawrence (December 2, 1894, New York City – November 20, 1973) is considered by many to be the first female film editor in Hollywood. She was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing: for Pal Joey (1957), with Jerome Thoms; and for Pepe (1960), with Al Clark.
Career
She began working at Vitagraph Studios in Flatbush, Brooklyn as a messenger at the age of 11. At 12, she was holding title cards. In 1915, she became the second female film cutter in cinema history, after Anna McKnight, who also worked at Vitagraph. She married Frank Lawrence, her film cutting teacher at Vitagraph.
In 1917, she moved to Hollywood and worked for Universal, First National, Gloria Swanson Productions, and Columbia Pictures at various times. She became Columbia's "head editor" or "supervising editor" in 1925. After director Erich von Stroheim was fired from the production of Queen Kelly (1929), star Gloria Swanson herself directed an alternate ending, with the help of cinematographer Gregg Toland and Lawrence. Lawrence edited Samuel Goldwyn Studio's first sound film, Bulldog Drummond (1929).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Viola Lawrence” as american film editor (1894-1973). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1507483. VIAF identifies the subject as 40908926. The Library of Congress control number is n87911892. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1973, 1957 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viola Lawrence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.