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The FIR Vault

WILLIAM WYLER

By Archives • Apr 16th, 2009 • Pages: 1 2 3

Shooting a Western circa 1928

It used to be said in Hollywood that Willie Wyler proves the truth of the proverb that says good things don’t always come in glamorous packages.

Physically, he’s a small man with no facial features you remember, totally devoid of sex-appeal, charisma, mystique or what-have-you. But professionally he’s more sensitive than 5 percent of contemporary directors to the infinite variety of the human psyche, and more able than the some percentage to put on the screen with intelligent, cinematic craftmanship, what he senses and sees.

His 41 films include some that will be permanent part of the world’s film heritage-e.g., the Goldwyn-produced WUTHERING HEIGHTS; THE WESTERNER; THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES; THE HEIRESS; CARRIE; ROMAN HOLIDAY; and FRIENDLY PERSUASION. In addition, he has expertly directed such topical, tendentious or culturally negative films as DODSWORTH; DEAD END; JEZEBEL; THE LETTER; THE LITTLE FOXES; MRS. MINIVER THE MEMPHIS BELLE; DETECTIVE STORY; THE DESPERATE HOURS; THE BIG COUNTRY; THE CHILDREN’S HOUR. Finally, out of the exuberance of sheer technical virtuosity – just to prove he could do it – he directed a spectacle (the ’59 BEN-HUR) and a filmusical FUNNY GIRL).

Wyler was born July 1, ’02, in Mulhouse, a small manufacturing town on the Rhone-Rhine Canal in the part of Alsace which then was part of Germany. His father, who had been born in Switzerland, had established a dry-goods store in Mulhouse and married a woman who had been born in Stuttgart. They had two other sons. Robert followed William to the US; worked at Universal; directed a few films in Paris; was associate producer on some of William’s films; and died early this year. Gaston had no connection with movies and died many years ago.

The hatred of the French in Alsace for their German rulers was part of Wyler’s childhood, and so was World War I. As soon as that war ended his father sent him to a business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the hope that he would come into the family business (Mulhouse had a considerable cotton industry). But Wyler was not interested in bourgeois life in Mulhouse and on completion of his courses in Lausanne he prevailed on his father to let him “get experience” by working in a dry-goods store in Paris. While he did so he took violin lessons at the Conservaloire Nationale de Musique. “I never intended to become a professional musician,” Wyler says, “and studied the violin as an amateur, the way young people in Europe study a musical instrument, as part of their general education.”

With Walter Huston on DODSWORTH

At that time (’22) Carl Laemmle, who was a distant cousin of Wyler’s mother, used to make annual trips to Europe to acquire properties and players for his film company (Universal). On one of these trips he kept an eye open for bright young Jewish boys who were eager to try their luck in the US (our immigration laws then posed no problems). Laemmle was in the habit of promising such hopefuls a job at $20 or $25 a week and telling them that thereafter they were on their own. He offered such a job to Wyler, and at the same time offered one to Paul Kohner. Wyler says a curious thing about this turn to his destiny: “If it hadn’t been for Laemmle I not only wouldn’t have come to the US but would probably be in jail by now.”

Laemmle’s hunches about the talented young frequently paid off – vide his elevating Irving ThaIberg from secretary to head of production, his letting a bit actor named Erich von Stroheim direct. And it paid off in the cases of Wyler and Kohner, who, soon after their arrival in Universal’s NYC headquarters, organized a foreign publicity department, i.e., they sent news releases, feature stories and photographs about Universal pictures to newspapers and magazines in countries outside the US. Other studios soon caught on and followed suit.

It did not take Wyler and Kohner long to realize the possibilities in the young motion picture industry and Wyler, aware that his physique offered no chance for a career before the camera, decided to have a career behind it. Kohner ultimately became an agent who handled actors, directors et al (including Wyler).

When Wyler told Laemmle he would like to learn how films are made, and how to direct them, Laemmle sent him to Universal’s studio in California, where Wyler learned to handle props, and to assist the grips, script clerk, cutter and casting director. And while he was learning by doing he was also observing Universal’s directors at work, and the work of the directors of other studios by studying their movies. The two Universal directors who taught him the most: Irving Cumming and George Archainbaud. He also learned a great deal while working on a serial under William Duncan. Then, after a period as an assistant director, Laemmlc let him direct, on a 3-day shooting schedule, a 2-reel Western budgeted at $2000.

For $60 a week Wyler directed about 40 of these 2-reel Westerns. He’d start one on Monday morning; finish it two or three days later; be handed the script of the one he was to start the following Monday. “Making those routine Westerns,” Wyler says, “taught me the fundamental thing about films – they have to move. The picture had to open with action – a girl on a runaway horse, on a runaway stagecoach, or a chase. Then the hero comes along and rescues her, and a little love story develops. Then a plot turn, involving heavies, and sheriff and posse. That was it – love story, big chase, big action, happy ending.”

With John Barrymore on COUNSELLOR AT LAW

Wyler was only 23 when he directed his first picture (CROOK BUSTERS. ’25). He endeavored, on those 2-reel Westerns, to add, whenever he could, a bit of comedy (DAZE OF THE WEST, ’27). and to increase the amount of romantic footage in his first 5-reeler (STRAIGHT SHOOTIN’, ’27). Gradually, he was given more leeway and was even allowed to change the script. But he was reprimanded when he allowed a leading man to light a cigarette. “The heroes in Westerns,” Wyler recalls, “weren’t supposed to smoke or drink. They were supposed to be as pure as the driven snow, like the girls.”

In ’28 Wyler directed his first non-Western, and became a US citizen.

That picture was a comedy called ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?, starring Bessie Love and Tom Moore. The storyline: a US soldier, returning to the US from France after World War I, is pursued by his girlfriend. It was Wyler’s last silent picture.

Since his directorial habits were still in the process of formation, still had not crystallized, Wyler had no trouble “adjusting to sound.” In fact he quickly got himself a front seat on sound’s bandwagon. His THE SHAKEDOWN (’28), a yarn about boxing, started as a silent but ended up one-fourth talking. Ditto for THE LOVE TRAP (’29), an uninteresting comedy-drama with a backstage setting.

Wyler’s first all-sound picture, HELL’S HEROES (’29), is a grim, realistically raw Western which nevertheless has a lot of sentimentality. It was both a critical and a commercial success, and since directors who could handle sound were not at that moment too numerous, Wyler’s name began to be known in Hollywood. After three more all-talking programmers – THE STORM, A HOUSE DIVIDED and HER FIRST MATE Wyler got to direct the picture which gave his reputation its first big lift.

With George Brent & Bette Davis on JEZEBEL

This was a cinemation of the Elmer Rice play called COUNSELLOR AT LAW, with John Barrymore and Belie Daniels in the leads. “I was a bit impressed to be directing Barrymore,” Wyler says. “After all, I had only just turned 30. But we got on together quite well. He was a wonderful actor, though his style was not like the acting of today. He was especially good at comedy and could read lines in ways that would make them seem funny, that would bring out a comic flavor I had been unaware of.”

Wyler also recalls COUNSELLOR AT LAW because of the problems it posed when he attempted to avoid the stasis that afflicts most movies adapted from stage plays. “The studio wanted me to take the camera out of the law offices,” says Wyler, “but I thought that would phony everything. My solution: using more offices than the two in the play and moving the actors around in them. It worked, and audiences did not feel confined.”

Wyler was not so successful in “opening up” Ferenc Molnar’s THE GOOD FAIRY, a sentimental play about an orphan in Budapest. But he was successful in winning the hand of that film’s leading lady: Margaret Sullavan. As soon as the picture was finished they married – in Yuma, Arizona, on November 26, ’34, and went to Europe on their honeymoon. It was a brief, unhappy marriage (divorce: March 13, ’36).

Before he left on his honeymoon Wyler had asked Universal to release him from his “small contract.” His reasons: Universal would not pay him what he thought he deserved; Universal was not producing the sort of films he wanted to direct; and he wanted to escape from the onus of being considered a relative of the boss (Laemmle). He says he was surprised at the alacrity with which Universal granted his request.

It was a wise move. Upon his return from his honeymoon he did some Cinderella soapera at 20th Century-Fox called THE GAY DECEPTION, with Frances Dee and Francis Lederer, and then went to work for Samuel Goldwyn.

With Greg Toland circa 1939

“You could write a book about how Goldwyn and I got together,” Wyler says, and adds: “Goldwyn’s merit as a producer derived from his good taste and his willingness to spend money to get the best talent. But that isn’t all. Goldwyn also wanted his fine films to make money, and they did. That’s what made him a great producer.”

The first picture Wyler directed for Goldwyn was a curious one for Goldwyn to undertake. Called THESE THREE, it was a bowdlerized version of the exploitation of lesbianism Lillian Hellman had concocted for the stage under the title of THE CHILDREN’S HOUR. Instead of having the two teachers in a girls’ school be suspected of lesbianism, THESE THREE had one of them be suspected of an illicit relation with a doctor. “THESE THREE was not the picture I had in tended,” says Wyler. “On the stage it was a tragedy, but in the film it was like an adventure story – people get in trouble, get out of it and everying ends up fine.”

Miss Hellman wrote the script for THESE THREE. Wyler thinks she is a great playwright and is proud to be her friend. “I see her whenever I go to New York,” he says, “or whenever she comes to Los Angeles. Our long and lasting friendship is the result of the three films we made together.”

Wyler was nominated for an Academy Award for his direction of his next picture: DODSWORTH. It was written by Sidney Howard, who had also adapted the Sinclair Lewis novel for the stage. Walter Huston played the title role, and Wyler is still very fond of his performance. “He had played the part on the stage,” Wyler says, “and in the film was letter perfect – no acting ruses, no acting devices, just the convincing power that comes from complete understanding of a role.”

After directing the last half of COME AND GET IT – the original director, Howard Hawks, had walked off the set following a row with Goldwyn – Wyler again worked with Miss Hellman, who had adapted DEAD END, the Sidney Kingsley stage play for the screen. Wyler says he wanted to shoot it in NYC’s slum; but that Goldwyn refused, and insisted that its action be juxtapose to a posh Upper East Side apartment house. The film is no more specious than the Kingsley play however, and was better acted (Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor).

With Gary Cooper on THE WESTERNER

In ’38 Wyler married Margaret Fallichet, a young actress from Dallas who was then under contract to Paramount. After going to college in Memphis she was one of the hopefuls David Selznick had tested for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND. When nothing came of that she returned to Dallas and did society reporting for a Dallas newspaper, but never lost the desire to be in Hollywood.*

Goldwyn and Wyler were simpatico but Goldwyn produced relatively few pictures and Wyler could not, for a variety of reasons, direct them all. So his picture after DEAD END was done at Warners – with Bette Davis, This was JEZEBEL, a soapera set in the Old South. The title role was one Miss Davis played with ease, and her performance won an Academy Award (partially, it is generally believed, to atone for her not getting an Award for her performance as Mildred in the ’34 OF HUMAN BONDAGE). “Bette Davis is a brilliant actress,” Wyler says, and adds: “She is hard working, tireless and is very demanding of everyone but of none more than of herself.”

Wyler says he induced Goldwyn to produce the ’39 version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS, which is one of Wyler’s best films, and one of Goldwyn’s best. Walter Wanger had commissioned Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht to adapt the Emily Bronte novel and had had Sylvia Sidney in mind for Cathy and Charles Boyer for Heathcliff. Miss Sidney, then under contract to Wanger, realized she was not right to the part of Cathy, and that Boyer wasn’t right for Heathcliff. They convinced Wanger, who was left with screenplay on his hands that is model of how an exceptionally complex novel can be successfully adapted for the screen.

* She and Wyler live in Beverly Hill and have a summer home at Malibu Beach. They have four children. Cathy (born 7.25.39) is married to Robert Sind, lives in NYC, and has two children. Judy (b. 5.21.41) is married to lawyer and lives in San Francisco. Both she and Cathy graduated from Lelant Stanford. Melanie (b. 11.25.50) at tends Claremont College and, at this writing, is on a student-tour through Russia and Africa. David (b. 6.25.52) student at the Beverly Hills High School worked last summer on a kibbutz in Israel.

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