[1] Long afterwards, West Side Story was listed as the 38th best-edited film of all time in a 2012 survey of members of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.
[2][3] Stanford's first credit as an editor was for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), which was a major production by the independent producer Sam Spiegel.
Excepting a 1955 film version of the opera Don Giovanni, any earlier work as an assistant editor wasn't credited.
Stanford's work on Pollack's feature Jeremiah Johnson (1972) drew the attention of critic Gene Siskel, who wrote "Oddly enough, it is the violent scenes, the ones that don't work within the story, in which Pollack excels.
"[5] In the 1960s, Stanford edited two films directed by Mark Rydell, including his debut The Fox (1967).