Sandy Whitelaw

Whitelaw was born in London and educated in Switzerland, the UK and the United States.[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sandy-whitelaw-dead-united-artist-791059. "Former United Artists Exec Sandy Whitelaw Dies at 84"]. He represented Britain as a skier in the 1956 Olympics.[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/24/sandy-whitelaw-obituary "Sandy Whitelaw obituary"].{{cite Sports-Reference |url=https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/wh/sandy-whitelaw-1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200418042352/https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/wh/sandy-whitelaw-1.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=18 April 2020 |title=Sandy Whitelaw Olympic Results |accessdate=7 March 2018}}

Whitelaw's film career began when he worked as an assistant to the producer David O. Selznick on the 1957 film A Farewell to Arms. He also worked for the production company Hecht-Lancaster. He went on to work for United Artists in a number of capacities, including as head of production for UA Europe.

At this time he was based in London and worked on films including Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), Federico Fellini’s Roma (1972) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron (1971). He directed two films: Lifespan (1974), which starred Klaus Kinski, and Vicious Circles (1997), which starred Ben Gazzara. He acted in a number of films including The American Friend (1977), Broken English (1981) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0925790/. "Sandy Whitelaw imdb page"].

Whitelaw began to work as a subtitler in the 1970s in Paris. It was the producer Pierre Cottrell who suggested that he subtitle Jean Eustache's film Mes petites amoureuses.[http://issuu.com/troiscouleurs/docs/121-web-simple. "Rod Glacial, Profession Sous-Titreur. Trois Couleurs 121, May 2014"]. He continued to work as a subtitler for four decades.

Whitelaw provided English subtitles for more than 1,000 films over a period of several decades. He once called it "like getting paid to do crosswords".[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444592404578033301429532328. "Anthony Paletta, Lost in Translation, Found in Subtitles, New York Times, 3 October 2012"]. One of the more challenging jobs he took on was the subtitling, with Stephen O'Shea, of Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine. Their subtitles for this film received considerable critical attention.[http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Journals/wph/vol2/56-240-2-PB.pdf. "Pierre-Alexis Mével. The Translation of Identity: Subtitling the Vernacular of the French cité". In MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 2 (2007), pp.49-56].[https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/movies/a-raw-french-film-survives-translation.html "A Raw French Film Survives Translation"].

Notable titles subtitled by Whitelaw include:

• Mes petites amoureuses (Eustache, 1974)
• Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer, 1983)
• Danton (Wajda, 1983)
• Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985)
• La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995)
• Heading South (Cantet, 2005)
• Quai d'Orsay (Tavernier, 2013)

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• [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/24/sandy-whitelaw-obituary David Thompson, Sandy Whitelaw obituary, The Guardian, 24 March 2015]
• [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sandy-whitelaw-dead-united-artist-791059 Cheryl Cheng, Sandy Whitelaw obituary, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 April 2015]
• {{IMDb name|0925790}}
• [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/movies/a-raw-french-film-survives-translation.html Alan Riding, "A Raw French Film Survives Translation", New York Times, 4 February 1996]

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Category:2015 deaths

Category:1930 births

Category:British film directors

Category:British male film actors

Category:British film producers

Category:British subtitlers

Category:British male alpine skiers

Category:Olympic alpine skiers for Great Britain

Category:Alpine skiers at the 1956 Winter Olympics

Category:20th-century British translators