Beginnings Jodie was born in Los Angeles, California, to Julius Caplan and Rosie Siegel. He started going by Jodie Copelan professionally early on in his career.
Career He began working as an assistant editor sometime around the early 1930s, and got his first credit as an editor on 1947's
The Guilty. He spent the next 30 years editing and directing films and TV episodes; his sole directorial credit on a feature film came in 1958 with the release of
Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a Western produced by
Robert L. Lippert, who Copelan edited many films for. The film was released by
20th Century Fox featuring a young
Clint Eastwood in a supporting role.
Personal life He married Lillian Schleifer in 1949. Jodie was a lifelong
Dodgers fan who spent his later years tracking prospects from the farm league. "If I had my life to live over again, it would be in baseball," he told a reporter for
The Los Angeles Times in 1973. == Selected filmography ==