Aram A. Avakian (April 23, 1926 – January 17, 1987) was an 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). Life and work 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 O.K. 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: