Mili Lerner Bonsignori (September 25th, 1918, NYC) was one of the few women that were behind the scenes during the fifties. She was born in an immigrant family - her father was from Russia, but her mother was from Lithuania. Her parents were Jewish and they spoke Yiddish in the family. Her brother was a film director, and Mili too chose to work in the motion picture industry. After she finished studies in New York, Mili later moved to California. Formerly a ballet prodigy, Mili transferred to publishing business and had a successful career after she came back to New York in 1944. After being promoted from script girl to apprentice editor, she became one of the four female editors in New York City.
After working for a film production company, she was promoted to assistant editor and started working in television in the show "See it Now", right from the pilot episode. Mili Lerner largely became famous for her work with Fred Friendly, the godfather of television journalism. One of the first broadcasts involved following the travel of a blood donation to the arm of a soldier. After the six week probation period, Mili was promoted to editor and her successful editor career started. The success of
CBS's "See it Now" was tremendous, thus, it opened jobs for her future career. After "See it Now" finished airing, she became a freelancer and produced several documentaries, including titles such as "...But What About the Children?" and "
CBS Reports: The Defense of the United States: A Call to Arms". She also worked with other TV celebrities like as Charles Kuralt. Mili was an editing authority later on, and was one of the few people who saw historical innovations, such as the videotape, brought into action. Mili was among the first who saw the rise and fall of McCarthyism (the Red Scare), and the Korean War through the eyes of the media.
She herself recalls her job quite extreme at certain times. "We couldn't work in the summer, because our arms were sweating and the film was curling in them, and we couldn't work in the winter, because it was so cold in the editing room that we couldn't edit because our hands were freezing!", she says in an interview to TV Archives. However, Mili Lerner had worked in factories during the war and she was quite the strong woman. Her job involved cutting the footage and putting it together, and even consulting Fred Friendly a few times, when "See it Now" were covering the Korean war and McCarthyism. Friendly's monumental show was aired on Sunday evenings for seven years, all of which Mili was in charge of the editing.
Fred Friendly himself said that Mili's editing skills were remarkable. Mili Lerner (later Bonsignori) was the person responsible for merging former radio stars' Edward R. Murrow's top-notch audio. She has won two Emmy awards and remains a classic woman worker, who showed incredible skills and was a perfect example of what will power (and some lucky circumstances) could do in the times when women still weren't welcome at work. While Fred and Murrow shaped the visible and audible parts of television, Mili Lerner was the woman that shaped television editing.
