Willie D. Burton

Willie D. Burton (* in Tuscaloosa , Alabama ) is an American sound engineer . He has worked on over 100 films such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or The Green Mile . Burton has received several awards, including twice an Oscar .

Life

Burton was already interested in radio and television technology at school, but Tuscaloosa had no special electronics offerings. So Burton moved to live with a relative in Long Beach , California , where he attended high school electronics courses. He then spent several years in the US Navy , where he worked with sonar systems .

Entering Hollywood was difficult for Burton because there were no black sound engineers in the relevant union before him. In 1969, Burton became the first African American to join the sound engineers' union, but initially kept his job in the Navy. As a union member, he received offers and slowly worked his way from cable carrier to sound assistant. As a sound assistant he worked until the discontinuation of the series in 1975 at Rauchende Colts . He was also responsible for the sound himself for the first time in the Police Story series . In 1975 he received his first feature film, Drehn wir noch'n Ding, as sound manager, because the director Sidney Poitier trusted him. Burton had his breakthrough a year later with the film Car Wash . Since then, Burton has worked on more than 100 films.

Awards

Burton has received numerous awards, including the 1984 BAFTA Award for WarGames - war games . In 2006 he won the Satellite Awards in the Sound Editing category for his work on Dreamgirls .

He was nominated for an Oscar for best sound for seven films, and he received the award for two of the seven films: 1989 for Bird and 2007 for Dreamgirls . He received the other five nominations in 1979 for The Buddy Holly Story , 1981 for The Hell Trip , 1984 for WarGames - War Games , 1995 for The Condemned and 2000 for The Green Mile .

Web links

• Willie D. Burton in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Portrait in Black America (English)