Arnold Glassman on AllMovie

As a documentary filmmaker and editor, award-winning filmmaker Arnold Glassman gained much acclaim for his work on such films as Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography (1992) and The Celluliod Closet (1995). Glassman's encyclopedic knowledge of film history made him the ideal choice to document everything from historic film figures to major motion picture studios and memorable television series, all to stunning effect and lasting impression. Born in New York City in 1946, it was as a child that the future filmmaker began to truly realize his passion for film. The son of a theater concessions manager who would later graduate from Pratt Institute and N.Y.U. Film School, Glassman's gift for editing was the result of both a strong internal passion and years of refining his skills. Following early work as a cinematographer on the feature Blond Poison (1979), it wasn't long before Glassman was serving as associate editor on such films as 1987's Raising Arizona, and the early '90s found the flourishing documentarian at his creative peak. After Glassman received numerous awards for Visions of Light, he continued as a prolific editor of such memorable documentaries as Sex, Censorship and the Silver Screen (1996) and Hitchcock: Shadow of a Genius (1999). Graduating to his first narrative feature with Bill Paxton's 2001 thriller Frailty, the avid editor's career would be tragically cut short when he died following a brief illness in early 2003. He was 56.