ANNE V. COATES

(12 December 1925 - 8 May 2018)

The British film editor Anne V. Coates, who has died at the age of 92, was the niece of film mogul J. Arthur Rank. Her first film job was at Elstree repairing Rank’s early religious films on their return from church screenings. She eventually secured a job at Pinewood, becoming assistant on Powell & Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948). After several more films as an assistant editor, she was the (uncredited) assembly cutter on Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men in 1952. From then on she was never out of work and edited The Pickwick Papers, The Horse’s Mouth, Tunes of Glory and many other British films. Lawrence of Arabia was her greatest achievement, but she also worked on Becket, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Murder on the Orient Express, The Eagle Has Landed, The Elephant Man, Greystoke, Chaplin, Erin Brockovich and very many others, notching up over fifty titles. She was working right up to the end of her life, on Fifty Shades of Grey and A Dolphin in Our Lake, which is in pre-production. Anne V. Coates was married to the film director Douglas Hickox and they have three children.

MICHAEL DARVELL