By RAY KELLY
Mo Henry, whose work as a negative cutter was critical to completing Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, has died. She was 67.
The Facebook group Mo Henry Fan Club – of which she was one of the three administrators – revealed yesterday that she passed away on January 14. Her son, Logan, confirmed her death from liver failure today to The Hollywood Reporter, adding he was “proud of the strength and poise she showed as she bravely fought her illness.” Survivors also include her sister, Sue, and brother, Pat.
Henry was a fourth generation negative cutter – her aunt began cutting negatives for Fox Studios after emigrating from Ireland in the 1920s. Her father, Mike Henry, had served as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s chief negative cutter. Mo Henry got her start 50 years ago on Jaws shortly after graduating from high school and worked on 300 films including LA Confidential, The Big Lebowski, Apocalypse Now: Redux, and many more. Her more recent projects included Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza and Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Review.
“My dad taught me that when you’re cutting a movie, you’re not just cutting a piece of plastic,” she told Variety in a 2019 interview. “This is years of a writer’s life. This is a director’s big shot. This is an actor’s big break. It’s all the people who worked on the film and weren’t home for their families on weekends. You’re holding something really precious, and you have to show up for it, because it represents so much labor and so much love.”
During the completion of The Other Side of the Wind, Henry organized and assembled 241,494 feet (45 hours) of 35mm film and 112,129 feet (51 hours) of 16mm film shot by Welles on various film stocks during the 1970s. She painstakingly reassembled the negative in key number order for Technicolor’s 4K scan. Henry was widely regarded as the last of the great negative cutters as the industry moved into the digital era.
“Mo was the last of four generations practicing the art of negative cutting. She was an essential part of the team finishing Orson’s final movie and a joy to work with. She was a wonderful human being and she and her amazing skills will be missed,” producer Frank Marshall told Wellesnet.
Ruth Hasty, post production supervisor on the Welles film, said in a social media post that she was “gutted” by the passing of Henry – a negative “cutter extraordinaire and all around fabulous human who is a legend in the film industry.”
Film historian Joseph McBride, who was a cast member in The Other Side of the Wind and involved in its completion, lauded Henry’s skill and accomplishments.
“Mo Henry was one of the finest technicians in Hollywood, one of the last of the great negative cutters. Her painstaking work took such care that it’s hard to comprehend; she was like one of the medieval craftspeople who labored on fine details of cathedrals,” McBride said. “Mo took on the task of cutting the negative of The Other Side of the Wind, a herculean job only she could have achieved. It’s good that she can be seen and heard at work on the film in the Frank Marshall/Ryan Suffern documentary A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making (which can be seen on Netflix). Mo Henry and her craft will be missed. I was fortunate to get to know her when we both worked on Other Wind.”
Editor’s note: A Final Cut for Orson with Mo Henry may be seen for free at the bottom of this Netflix webpage, https://www.netflix.com/title/80085566 or the embedded video below.
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