Bretherton, the son of editor/director
Howard Bretherton and actress Dorothea McEvoy, was born in
Los Angeles. He served with the
United States Air Force during
World War II. After World War II, he joined the editing department at
Twentieth Century-Fox, at first helping other editors, including
Barbara McLean,
Robert L. Simpson,
Louis R. Loeffler,
James B. Clark,
William H. Reynolds, and, in later years,
Dorothy Spencer and
Hugh S. Fowler. His first project as a film editor was
The Bottom of the Bottle in 1956. In 1995, Bretherton received the
American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award. Bretherton died of
pneumonia in Los Angeles in 2000. Bretherton's most noted work was the editing of the film
Cabaret (1972), which was directed by
Bob Fosse. Bretherton received the
Academy Award for Best Film Editing, an
ACE Eddie Award, and a nomination for the
BAFTA Award for Best Editing for this film. In his 1972 review,
Roger Greenspun gives some insight into Bretherton's achievement:
Cabaret was listed as the 30th best-edited film of all time in a 2012 survey of members of the
Motion Picture Editors Guild. ==Filmography==