Sidney Sutherland: Writer To Animator To Sound Editor

[momsne]

Background: Three of my favorite pre-code Warner Bros. movies are “The Match King, “Hi, Nellie” and “Friends Of Mr. Sweeney.” Sidney Sutherland shares a screenplay credit on all these movies. Sutherland co-wrote 7 released movies at Warner Bros., from 1932 to 1934, according to IMDb. Then, in 1935, IMDb shows that he was again working as an animator at Warner Bros. for their Merrie Melodies cartoons. Sutherland was also working as a writer for other studios from 1936 to 1946. Sutherland seems to have worked as an animator for one Walter Lantz cartoon in 1935 before returning to Warner Bros. to work only as an animator. His last movie writing job was for the 1946 movie “Wife Wanted,” a movie starring and produced by Kay Francis for Monogram. She worked at the Warner Bros. lot with Sutherland in the early 30s, when she was a big star there. Sutherland’s departure from the writer’s building was probably related to Jack Warner taking over as studio production chief, after Darryl Zanuck’s abrupt departure in 1933.
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What I find interesting about Sutherland is the way he started his career as a writer, then went to work also as an animator and then switched to being a sound editor from 1955 on. IMDb shows Sutherland worked as a sound editor for television shows from 1955 to 1966. Then he got his big break, working as the sound editor for the 1966 movie “The Russians Are Coming.” Finally, back to working on big studio movies. The only trouble was, Sutherland died in April 1968,

I found a bibliography notation that Sidney Sutherland wrote “The Mystery of Sacco-Vanzetti” for Liberty Magazine for March 8, 1930. So Sutherland probably was one of the many newspaper and magazine writers who went looking for steady, well paid work at a Hollywood studio as the Depression took hold of the country. Sutherland’s first writing job for Warner Bros. was for the 1932 movie “The Match King,” a great movie. Sutherland also co-wrote two other very fine Warner Bros. movies, “Friends Of Mr. Sweeney” and “Hi, Nellie.” His later writing career has no standouts as far as I could see. Unlike at Warner Bros. under Zanuck, Sutherland’s writing career was ill-served by the low budget movie writing jobs he later had.

What does stand out is the radical career changes Sutherland made. I am not the expert on Hollywood movies, but how many other examples does anyone know of a studio writer going from the job of writer to animator to sound editor, or anything close to such career changes? All I can say is that Sutherland’s Hollywood career really was a long and winding road.

[David Pierce]

I get 81 hits for Sidney Sutherland in the lantern search for Media History Digital Library.

He seems to have had a successful career, at least through 1946. A 1932 article refers to him as " the famous Liberty magazine writer." The other parts of his career are undocumented here, but might be in union publications we haven't scanned yet.

David

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