Aram A. Avakian (April 23, 1926 â€" January 17, 1987) was an
Armenian-American film editor and director. His work in the latter
role includes Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959) and the indie film End of
the Road (1970).Aram "Al" Avakian was born in Manhattan, New York, in
1926 to Armenian parents from Iran and Soviet Georgia. He graduated
Horace Mann School and Yale University before serving as a Naval
officer on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. On the G.I. Bill after
the war he went to France where he attended the Sorbonne. There he was
part of a tight group of young friends who defined the American
literary movement of 1950's Paris, including Terry Southern, William
Styron, John P. Marquand, and George Plimpton. In 1953, Avakian
returned to the United States and apprenticed under Gjon Mili who got
him started in documentary editing. In his spare time Avakian took
still photographs of the legendary jazz sessions his brother the jazz
producer George Avakian recorded. From 1955 to 1958, Avakian was the
editor of Edward R. Murrow's program See It Now. In his book Vanity of
Duluoz, Jack Kerouac based the character of Charlie on Aram Avakian.He
soon became a feature film editor and director. In 1958, he
co-directed with Bert Stern, a filmed record of the Newport Jazz
Festival. The result, Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959), which Avakian
also edited, is credited with being "the first feature-film
documentary of a music festival." He edited the feature film Girl of
the Night (1960), "acknowledged for its early use of the freeze frame
and the jump cut" in American films. His credits as an editor also
included Robert Frank's Ok End Here (1960), Arthur Penn's The Miracle
Worker (1962), Robert Rossen's Lilith (1964), Penn's Mickey One
(1965), in which Avakian also plays the disembodied voice of Warren
Beatty's tormentor, and Jerry Schatzberg's Honeysuckle Rose
(1979).Avakian directed the movie End of the Road (1970), which
received an "X" rating for its graphic depiction of an abortion. For
End of the Road, Avakian received the Golden Leopard Award at the
Locarno International Film Festival. LIFE magazine's November 7, 1969,
issue covered the film in a spectacular 9-page article, and in-depth
interviews ran in Esquire and Playboy. In a review of the film in The
New York Times, Roger Greenspun wrote of End of the Road: "The precise
truth of, say, 5 in a summer afternoon on the lawn of an assistant
professor in a small country college has perhaps never been caught in
a commercial movie before -- but that is the kind of precise truth
this movie captures again and again." The film stars James Earl Jones,
Stacy Keach, Dorothy Tristan, and Harris Yulin. In the film Avakian
plays The Landlord, The Pigman, and the voice of the psychiatrist on
the phone. George Avakian oversaw the music. Avakian's old friend, the
novelist Terry Southern, co-produced the film, and co-wrote the
screenplay with Avakian and Dennis McGuire. Aram Avakian Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter