Ralph Kemplen

Ralph Kemplen
Born	(1912-10-08)8 October 1912 London, England
Died	4 April 2004(2004-04-04) (aged 91) London, England
Occupation	film editor
Children	Willy Kemplen

Ralph Kemplen (8 October, 1912 – 4 April, 2004) was a British film editor with more than fifty film credits between 1933 and 1982. Kemplen had a long collaboration with director John Huston (1906-1987) on six films between 1951 and 1966. Kemplen also directed one feature film, The Spaniard's Curse (1958).

Kemplen won the BAFTA Award for Best Editing for The Day of the Jackal (1973) and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing (for Moulin Rouge (1952), Oliver! (1968), and Day of the Jackal).

Selected filmography

The director of each film is indicated in parenthesis.

• My Heart is Calling (1935)
• She Shall Have Music (1935)
• Death on the Set (Hiscott-1935)
• The Man in the Mirror (Elvey-1936)
• Dusty Ermine (Vorhaus-1936)
• Young Man's Fancy (Stevenson-1939)
• London Scrapbook (De Marney & Cekalski-1942)
• The Saint Meets the Tiger (Stein-1943)
• Carnival (Haynes-1946)
• Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (Huntington-1948)
• The African Queen (Huston-1951)
• Moulin Rouge (Huston-1952)
• Beat the Devil (Huston-1953)
• Room at the Top (Clayton-1959)
• The Savage Innocents (Ray-1960)
• Freud (Huston-1962)
• The Night of the Iguana (Huston-1964)
• A Man for All Seasons (Zinneman-1966)
• The Bible: In the Beginning... (Huston-1966)
• Oliver! (Reed-1968)
• The Day of the Jackal (Zinneman-1973) (for which he won the 1974 BAFTA Award).
• The Odessa File (Neame-1974)
• The Great Muppet Caper (Henson-1981)
• The Dark Crystal (Henson & Oz-1982)

See also

• List of film director and editor collaborations

Further reading

• "Obituary: Ralph Kemplen". The Times(London). 14 April 2004.
• Perkins, Roy; Stollery, Martin (2002). British Film Editors: The Heart of the Movie. BFI Publishing. Credits for Room at the Top (d. Jack Clayton, 1958) and A Man for All Seasons (d. Fred Zinnemann, 1966) consolidated Kemplen's reputation as a great dialogue editor. On the latter film Zinnemann invited Kemplen to contribute comments not only on the script but also on rehearsals.
• Piper, Jim (2014). The Film Appreciation Book: The Film Course You Always Wanted to Take. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. ISBN 9781621534471. Piper uses a segment from The African Queen that was edited by Kemplen in order to illustrate "Establishing Shots and the Classic Sequence".