Mark Robson Movies and Career Information

Mark Robson (4 December 1913 – 20 June 1978) was a Canadian-born film editor, film director and producer in Hollywood. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to the United States at a young age. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles then found work in the prop department at 20th Century Fox studios. He eventually went to work at RKO Pictures where he began training as a film editor. In 1940 he worked as an assistant to Robert Wise on the editing of Citizen Kane in addition to several other films. Both he and Wise benefited tremendously from producer and screenwriter Val Lewton, who promoted Robson from film editor to production assistant and later as director. In 1943, at the insistence of Lewton, Robson assisted Lewton and famed director Jacques Tourneur in a series of low-budget horror films produced by Val Lewton that today are regarded as some of RKO's best, including Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. Later, Lewton was instrumental in promoting Robson to the director's chair for films such as The Seventh Victim (1943), Robson's first directing credit, and the troubled Isle of the Dead (1945). His success at RKO lead to work on major film projects and in 1949