Irving Lerner

Editor/director Irving Lerner got his start in the film business at Columbia University, where he was a research editor on the school's Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and began making documentaries for the school's anthropology department in the early 1930s. He produced documentaries for the Office of War Information during World War II, and after the war he became the head of New York University's Educational Film institute. In 1948 Lerner and Joseph Strick co-directed a short documentary, Muscle Beach (1948). After that Lerner got into low-budget feature films, directing the gritty little crime drama 'C'-Man (1949) and the somewhat bizarre Mister Universe (1951), about a bodybuilder who gets involved with con artists and professional wrestling. He also worked as a cinematographer, editor and assistant director on others' films, and served as director and cinematographer on several documentaries. He was the editor on Martin Scorsese's 1977 film New York, New York (1977), but died before finishing the cutting. Scorsese dedicated the film to him.