# Owen Marks?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/owen-marks/835242>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [June 9, 2019, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/owen-marks/835242 "2019-06-09T03:09:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2019, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/owen-marks/835242/1 "2019-06-09T03:09:09Z")

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I was just musing about the film, Casablanca, [in the thread about Ebert](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21688365&postcount=123) and then realized that the key to turning a bunch of random footage of varying quality into something really good probably comes down to the editor.

The editor for Casablanca was a man named Owen Marks:

> **[Owen Marks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Marks)**
>
> Owen Marks (August 8, 1899 – September 18, 1960) was an English film editor who worked in the US.
> Born in England, Marks spent time as a prizefighter before his film career began in 1928, when Warner Bros. contracted him as a film editor. He edited over 95 films during his tenure. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for Casablanca (1942) and Janie (1944), but did not win either time.
> Marks died on September 18, 1960, in Los Angeles, California. His final films as edi...

From the brevity of his entry, I take it that no one has ever given him much love in terms of his work product. He’s just some guy who cranked out a bunch of films a long time ago.

But, a significant number of Marks’ films seem to have been top-shelf. Casablanca won three Oscars, of course.

Beyond that, though, he has three separate films that have been specially selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry:

The Treasure of the Sierra Madres  
White Heat  
East of Eden

And, more impressively, all of the following of his movies were nominated for Oscars:

Angels with Dirty Faces  
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex  
Pride of the Marines  
Janie  
Caged

He did do a lot of films, so maybe that’s just happenstance. But it might be worth looking through his films - if anyone’s that sort of person - just to see if it might have been him bringing the magic, more than the other people who were in those films.