Murder by Contract

Irving Lerner (7 March 1909, New York City – 25 December 1976, Los Angeles)

Before becoming a filmmaker, Lerner was a research editor for Columbia University’s Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, getting his start in film by making documentaries for the anthropology department. In the early 1930s, he was a member of the Workers Film and Photo League, and later, Frontier Films. He made films for the Rockefeller Foundation and other academic institutions, becoming a film editor and second-unit director involved with the emerging American documentary movement of the late 1930s. Lerner produced two documentaries for the Office of War Information during WW II and after the war became the head of New York University’s Educational Film Institute. In 1948, Lerner and Joseph Strick shared directorial chores on a short documentary, Muscle Beach. Lerner then turned to low-budget, quickly filmed features. When not hastily making his own thrillers, Lerner worked as a technical advisor, a second-unit director, a co-editor and an editor.

Lerner was cinematographer, director, or assistant director on documentary films such as One Third of a Nation (1939), Valley Town (1940), The Land (1942) directed by Robert Flaherty, and Suicide Attack (1950). Lerner was also producer of the OWI documentary Hymn of the Nations (1944), directed by Alexander Hammid, and featuring Arturo Toscanini, and co-director with Joseph Strick of the short documentary Muscle Beach (1948).

Irving Lerner was also a director and film editor with directing credits such as Studs Lonigan (1960) and editing credits such as Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) and Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977). Lerner died during the cutting of New York, New York, and the film was dedicated to him. —Wikipedia