Her impact was summarized by Adrian Dannatt in 1996 who wrote that McLean was "a revered editor who perhaps single-handedly established women as vital creative figures in an otherwise patriarchal industry.

"[8] McLean was born in Palisades Park, New Jersey; she was the daughter of Charles Pollut, who ran a film laboratory.

John Gallagher has written that "Studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck was himself a brilliant editor and maintained the best editorial department in Hollywood.

"[11] Darryl Zanuck not only trusted McLean with the editing of 20th Century Fox's more important projects, he depended on her judgment in many other areas of filmmaking, including casting and production.

[3] In 1940, a Los Angeles Times story commented that "Barbara McLean, one of Hollywood's three women film editors, can make stars — or leave their faces on the cutting room floor.

In 1950–1951, McLean edited three of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's films, including All About Eve, for which she received her final Academy Award nomination.

McLean received three further nominations for editing films directed by King: for Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), The Song of Bernadette (1943), and Wilson (1944).

[5] It may be that King and McLean's greatest accomplishment was the film Twelve O'Clock High (1949); Sean Axmaker has written "Twelve O'Clock High was one of the early and arguably the greatest of the Hollywood films to examine the pressures of command and the psychological toll of making life and death decisions for men they come to know and care for.

McLean was instrumental in the careers of other film editors such as Hugh S. Fowler, William H. Reynolds, and Robert Simpson.