Frederic Knudtson was an American film editor with 79 credits over his career, which spanned 1932 to 1964. He received six nominations for the Academy Award for Film Editing

Academy Award for Film Editing

The Academy Award for Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since 1981, every film selected as Best Picture has also been nominated for the Film Editing...

, including five in the six years preceding his death.

His first credit was as an assistant editor on the 1932 film What Price Hollywood?

What Price Hollywood?

What Price Hollywood? is a 1932 American drama film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay by Gene Fowler, Rowland Brown, Ben Markson, and Jane Murfin is based on a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns.-Plot:...

. He then edited a string of B-movie

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

s throughout the 1930s and '40s, picking up his first Oscar nomination in 1949 for the dark thriller The Window

The Window

The Window is a 1949 American black-and-white suspense film noir, based on the short story "The Boy Cried Murder" by Cornell Woolrich. The film, which was a critical success, was produced by Frederic Ullman, Jr. for $210,000 but earned much more, making it a box office hit for RKO Pictures...

(directed by Ted Tetzlaff

Ted Tetzlaff

Dale H. "Ted" Tetzlaff was a noted Academy Award-nominated Hollywood cinematographer active in the 1930s and 1940s. He was particularly favored by actress Carole Lombard...

).

His productive association with Stanley Kramer

Stanley Kramer

Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...

 began in 1955 and yielded his greatest work: The Defiant Ones

The Defiant Ones

The Defiant Ones is a 1958 drama film which tells the story of two escaped prisoners, one white and one black, who are shackled together and who must co-operate in order to survive. It stars Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Cara Williams, Charles McGraw, and Lon Chaney, Jr...

(1958), On the Beach

On the Beach (1959 film)

On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name. The film features Gregory Peck , Ava Gardner , Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins...

(1959), Inherit the Wind

Inherit the Wind (1960 film)

Inherit the Wind is a 1960 Hollywood film adaptation of the play of the same name, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, directed by Stanley Kramer....

(1960), Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American drama film dealing with the Holocaust and the Post-World War II Nuremberg Trials. It was written by Abby Mann, directed by Stanley Kramer, and starred Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy...

(1961), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers...

(1963).