In an unprecedented event on May 23 American Cinema Editors held an online video conference celebrating the life of the much-loved Diane Adler, ACE. She passed away on April 22 at the age of 97, just days before this year’s ACE Invisible Art/ Visible Artists – an event that she shepherded for two decades.

Though she was a Los Angeles native, Adler never planned to go into the film industry. She was dedicated to putting her children through college. Married at 18 she became a single mother in the mid-‘50s, in need of a way to make a living. She heard of an opening at the Bronson Studios in Hollywood and took a job typing labels for 16mm film reels. That led to a secretarial position at ZIV Productions

When her boss, Don Tait, moved to 20th Century Fox’s new television division he needed someone to cut commercials into their TV shows and he asked Adler. She had never handled film before, but she felt she was up for it. That led to becoming an assistant film editor at Four Star Productions where she met Tom Rolf, ACE, who was also assisting. When Rolf moved up to cut at Paramount, he hired Diane to assist him.

In those days female assistants were not common, but Adler excelled working for Rolf and Stuart Gilmore, Bill Brame and John Woodcock. Director Howard Hawks liked the idea of having a woman in the cutting room when she and Woodcock were doing Red Line 7000. When he started El Dorado he told Adler he wanted to work with her. She replied, “If you hire me you have to hire John Woodcock too.” He hired them both.

Adler got her cutting break on The Bill Cosby Show. Getting a full editor’s salary was a big incentive to a single mom as well as practicing a craft she had come to love. After the show concluded she moved on to several movies of the week as well as the Telly Savalas series Kojak.

The Rockford Files became a real home for her for five years. The production had a family atmosphere from its star James Garner all the way down the crew. “They just don’t make actors like James Garner anymore. He was a wonderful human being and an aw-shucks kind of guy,” Adler remembered in a CinemaEditor interview conducted in recognition of her 2015 ACE Career Achievement Award. “What you saw on the screen is what he gave you in life.”

When the series ended, she moved on to several MOWs and such series as Bret Maverick with Garner, Riptide, Hunter and Spenser: For Hire. She edited The Presidio with Sean Connery and Mark Harmon before retiring in the mid-‘90s. But ‘retirement’ wouldn’t be the right word. Adler had fallen in love with the craft that she mastered. She served on the Motion Picture Editors Guild Board of Directors and became its secretary in 1992, a position she held until 2018. For ACE, she was a co-producer of Invisible Art/Visible Artists as well as proofreader for CinemaEditor magazine.

Additionally, she was active in the California Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey on the race committee. She also was an editorial assistant and contributing writer to its magazine, Breeze. Adler was so full of energy and said in her CinemaEditor interview, “I had more fun. I loved working. I looked forward to getting up every morning and going to work.”

She is survived by her children, Carol and Gary, who did go to college. She was a great artist and lover of humanity. – JACK TUCKER, ACE