[2] "Bill" Austin began his career in 1928 as a freelance film editor, usually working for independent producers of westerns.
Columbia Pictures complied with this requirement by sending Canadian-born crew members to studios north of the border.
His handling of Universal's Sherlock Holmes mystery The Spider Woman (released in 1944) gave the film unusual suspense.
It won him an assignment at Monogram Pictures, where his work on the Marjorie Weaver-Peter Cookson mystery Shadow of Suspicion (1944) earned him a permanent place at the studio.
He retired at age 65, after the Tarzan series, but returned to edit a low-budget outdoor adventure, Legend of the Northwest, in 1978.