William Wyler

by Gabriel Miller

  War Films

  Mrs. Miniver (1942), Memphis Belle (1944), Thunderbolt (1945)

  In 1941, MGM, the biggest and most glamorous studio in Hollywood, borrowed Wyler to work with producer Sidney Franklin—and, by extension, Louis B. Mayer—on an adaptation of Mrs. Miniver. The film would be based on a series of loosely connected stories by Jan Struther that had originally appeared in the London Times and were later published as a book in 1939. The stories present an idealized portrait of an upper-class, though not aristocratic, English family enjoying the communal world and family life to which their affluence entitles them. The Miniver stories gain drama and some poignancy from allusions to the impending war, which threatens their way of life.

  Sidney Franklin had enjoyed a successful career as a director for Irving Thalberg (The Good Earth); after Thalberg's death, Franklin became a producer and was noted for his elegance and taste. His other notable directorial efforts include The Dark Angel (Lillian Hellman's first screenwriting credit, and the vehicle for an Oscar-nominated performance by Merle Oberon), Noël Coward's Private Lives, and The Guardsman (starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne). Wyler was still directing The Little Foxes when Franklin started courting him for this project. Wyler jumped at the chance to work with Franklin. During a lunch meeting, Franklin insisted on reading Wyler the script, and before he was halfway through, Wyler had agreed to direct the film.

  The script for Mrs. Miniver utilized very few incidents from the book. The screenwriters—Arthur Wimperis, James Hilton, George Froeschel, and Claudine West—kept a few plot details but essentially refashioned the book's episodic structure into a well-crafted, unified story that focuses on the war. The script actually began where the book left off, in September 1939, just as England declares war on Germany. The screenwriters added the central subplot of Lady Beldon and the rose-growing contest with the local stationmaster, Mr. Ballard, which adds an element of social commentary on British class conflict and shows how the war started the process of bringing the classes together. (The coming together of the classes also makes the Minivers’ world seem more American.) The romance between Lady Beldon's granddaughter, Carol, and Vin Miniver was also added. Most important, the entire Miniver saga was transformed into a propaganda piece in support of America's joining the European conflict.

  Wyler began shooting Mrs. Miniver in November 1941, when the United States was still technically neutral, even though Roosevelt, in his “Four Freedoms” speech in January, had stated: “Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world.”1 Wyler had always been an ardent supporter of FDR and was vehemently anti-Nazi. More than a decade later, while being investigated by the HUAC, he explained his politics in a draft letter prepared for Y. Frank Freeman, production chief at Paramount: “My interest in any organizations of a political nature began during the Roosevelt Era here and the rise of Nazism abroad…. As a foreign-born American I was perhaps more alarmed from the beginning by the threat of Nazism than the average American. As one who had spent his childhood in a country constantly fought over, Alsace-Lorraine, and its people divided into two nationalist groups, I understood that extreme nationalism always leads to loss of freedom for the people.”2 At the end of his life, he stated categorically, “I was a war monger. I was concerned about Americans being isolationists. Mrs. Miniver obviously was a propaganda film.”3

  MGM, the studio with the most stars and the most money, was originally gun-shy about producing films that smacked of controversy. As the war in Europe escalated, however, and more European markets were closed to American films, some filmmakers began to insert pro-war sentiments into their work. As early as 1939—and in spite of objections from the Breen office—Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which exposed pro-Nazi organizations in America. That same year, fellow émigré Fred Zinnemann, whom Wyler had employed as a consultant for These Three and was now working in MGM's shorts department, made a one-reel film for its Crime Does Not Pay series about espionage in the United States. In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock made Foreign Correspondent, which closes with a speech delivered by Joel McCrea (playing an American correspondent in London reporting on the Blitz) that probably served as a model for the concluding speech in Mrs. Miniver, written in part by Wyler. (Hitchcock would continue his cinematic war against the Nazis with Saboteur, released the same year as Wyler's film.) Also in 1940, Charlie Chaplin satirized Hitler in The Great Dictator, which culminated in a speech urging people everywhere to unite and fight for freedom.

  In the summer of 1941, these films and others prompted two isolationist U.S. senators, Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota and Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri, to launch an investigation into propaganda disseminated by Hollywood films. This inquiry was tied to a probe of the allegedly monopolistic practices of the eight major studios, whose vertical integration allowed them to exhibit their films in their own theaters.4 Harry Warner, Darryl Zanuck, and attorney Wendell Willkie defended the studios against these charges. Nye was a popular figure with the fascist-friendly America-First Committee, and his racist and anti-Semitic ranting against the foreigners who ran Hollywood—a place he described as swarming “with refugees and British actors”5—eventually caused the press to condemn him in print. The senators were discredited both by their antiforeigner views and by their ignorance of the films they condemned. When Clark was asked to back up his claims against Warner Brothers by producing evidence from the films, he proclaimed: “No, I have not seen any of them. I am not going to see any of them.”6 The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, effectively ended the investigation.

  While these debates were raging in the Senate, the Office of War Information (OWI) was trying to get the Hollywood studios to release films that emphasized America's connection to England and its other allies. Lowell Mellett, chief of the OWI's Bureau of Motion Pictures, said at a gathering of film producers, “We would like to see pictures that dramatize the underlying causes of the war and the reason why we fight. Unless the public understands these, the war may be meaningless.”7 Roosevelt's secret meeting with Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland, where the Atlantic Charter was issued, cemented the partnership between the two countries even before the United States entered the war. Many Americans, however, viewed England as a class-ridden society that was not truly democratic. According to Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, “Though the British upper classes fascinated Americans, they also produced an opposite reaction. Roosevelt thought Britain's trouble was ‘too much Eton and Oxford.’”8 Hollywood's delight in presenting films about the British aristocracy and their imperialist policies would have to be tempered in favor of stories that accentuated their democratic spirit.9 Although Mrs. Miniver was made before the OWI achieved much influence in Hollywood, it celebrates the connection between the two countries that the U.S. government wanted the film industry to showcase.

  Wyler always envisioned Mrs. Miniver as a serious propaganda film. In 1942, he told Hedda Hopper, “People say we should be making escapist pictures today. I say ‘Why? This is the [sic] hell of a time to escape from reality! We're in an all-out war—a people's war—it's the time to face it. Let's make propaganda pictures, but make them good.’”10 Wyler's trademark perfectionism, however, grated on the nerves of a variety of individuals, particularly the film's star, Greer Garson, and set designer Cedric Gibbons. As a result, producer Franklin had to work hard to keep everyone on an even keel. In his quest for realism, Wyler wanted to make the film at the Denham Studio in London, but the war prevented it. Instead, he was forced to film at Culver City, where the sets, designed in MGM's lavish style, created a “chocolate box world of rose strewn villages, landed gentry and old family retainers.”11 Wyler despised the set.

  Wyler even quarreled with Louis B. Mayer over one of the film's most famous scenes—when Mrs. Miniver encounters a downed Nazi pilot. In a late script version,12 the German is depicted rather sympathetically, suggesting that he reminds
Mrs. Miniver of her son Vin, who recently volunteered for the British Air Force. She spends time cleaning and dressing his wounds; speaks to him about his duties, hoping to get a better understanding of Vin's military life; and even offers him tea. Wyler, who thought the sympathy for the Nazi was carried too far, refused to film the scene as written and as Mayer wanted. Wyler declared: “Mr. Mayer, if I had several Germans in the picture, I wouldn't mind having one who was a decent young fellow. But I've only got one German. And if I make this picture, this one German is going to be a typical little Nazi son-of-a-bitch. He's not going to be a friendly little pilot but one of Goering's monsters.”13 Mayer, who did not want to offend his foreign audience—particularly his German audience—finally relented. And once Pearl Harbor happened, the incident was forgotten.

  Wyler also made some key emendations to the script. For instance, he cut a prologue that opens in an old-fashioned upper-class London club. As an English gentleman is about to depart, he asks the score of a cricket game and banters with a stockbroker about investing in aircraft, since the price is going up. He leaves and is then seen entering his apartment, where his secretary is waiting. He tells her that he has had a moment of inspiration, asks not to be disturbed, and starts dictating in German, which then changes to English. What follows is a radio broadcast. In the original concept, this character's broadcasts were intended to be cut into the film at various points, interrupting the action. Wyler retains only one of these broadcasts, which is heard at a pub until one of the patrons quickly turns off the radio. The original character is arrogant and reprehensible, and although Wyler clearly had no qualms about presenting Germans this way, he obviously considered this device dramatically inept; he preferred to present his material in ways that emerged more effectively from the story.14

  The early script's opening broadcast offers the following diatribe: “In this report I shall deal with the class that is most accurately representative of any nation—the Middle Class. The Middle Class was once the bulwark of England's greatness—but today, moved by a frantic urge to ape the luxury and ostentation of the class above them, they have no aim in life save the preservation of their own material security…. Self indulgent, comfort-loving, materialistic, the Middle Class of England, in its decadence, will offer little resistance to the world domination of a master race.”15 Although Wyler was interested in propaganda, this was just the kind of clumsy, overstated writing he wanted to avoid. He begins the film, instead, with a written prologue that offers a testament to the values of the English people, who are described as a “happy, careless people who work and play, rear their children…soon to be fighting desperately for their way of life and for life itself.” Wyler wanted to put his audience in an inclusive mood, and he chose to do so by Americanizing the Minivers into an English version of MGM's Hardy family.

  The original script contained further references to the materialism of the middle class, much of which Wyler eliminated. Instead, he has the aristocratic Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty) deliver lines about the unfortunate blurring of class differences in an offhand, humorous way that makes the point but softens the impact. Wyler's film emphasizes that the English want the same things Americans do—to work hard, to live comfortably and in peace, and to enjoy their prosperity, which occasionally means buying nice things like new hats and cars.

  Arthur Wimperis helped Wyler inject more realism into the script. Because of his experiences as an air-raid warden and a river patrolman, he was able to lend some authenticity to parts of the film. He also contributed details to the depiction of Belham, the fictional town where the Minivers live, giving it some of the attributes of his own hometown. Wimperis placed Belham on the banks of the Thames so that he could incorporate the story of Clem and the Battle of Dunkirk, which he had learned about from friends. British playwright R. C. Sheriff was later hired to write the bomb-shelter scene.16

  Wyler's reputation initially discouraged actor Walter Pidgeon, who remarked, “I heard so many tales about William Wyler that I decided not to do it.”17 Eddie Mannix, an executive at MGM, finally talked him into taking the part of Clem Miniver. Greer Garson was not MGM's first choice to play Mrs. Miniver. Norma Shearer had already turned down the role. Shearer, too, had initially been put off by the prospect of working with Wyler, and he confirmed her misgivings. When she suggested that in order to play the mother of a twenty-year-old son she would have to be aged, Wyler undiplomatically told her that she looked just right for the part. He later apologized, explaining that the character was ageless and the role should be played by someone as young and attractive as possible.

  On the first day of shooting, Garson tried to defuse any tension by presenting the autocratic Wyler with a pair of black velvet gloves, which he wore the entire day. But over time, Wyler's method of reshooting scenes angered and frustrated her, and their relationship deteriorated. He once asked her to light Walter Pidgeon's cigarette so many times in one scene that she became ill from inhaling too much smoke. Bette Davis, however, assured Garson that if she were patient, she would give the performance of her career under Wyler's direction. Garson eventually acknowledged that Wyler was indeed a master director, and like Davis, she won an Oscar under his guidance. During one emotional scene, she recollected, “Willy came over to me and said, ‘The tears in your eyes. That was very good. But you let them spill over one second too soon. Now if you get the tears again, I want you to hold them there. And then I want you to let that tear run down your cheek.’” Garson did as she was told, and when the camera moved in on her again, “the tear obligingly and obediently rode out and down my cheek.”18

  Wyler fought with Mayer over the part of Carol Beldon. Mayer wanted to use one of the young actresses on the lot, but the director insisted on Teresa Wright, whom he had introduced in The Little Foxes. Wyler told Hedda Hopper that “Teresa has the quality for this particular part,” and he promised MGM, “If you give me Teresa, I'll take any young man you've got on the lot for the juvenile.”19 He chose Richard Ney from the studio's cadre of youthful actors to play Vin Miniver, and Wright went on to win an Oscar for her acting in the film.

  Mrs. Miniver offers the most idealized portrait of marriage presented by Wyler since he started working for Goldwyn in 1936. The first part of the film is closer to the idyllic, fairy-tale world of The Good Fairy and The Gay Deception than to anything Wyler directed after 1935, but it turns dark in the second half, which is dominated by destruction and death. Mrs. Miniver also feels more insistently claustrophobic and looks darker than those earlier works, as Wyler utilizes more nighttime settings.

  The first part of the film presents a stylized portrait of a picture-postcard English town where neighbors live in harmony, and the Minivers are a portrait of domestic bliss. Early on, there are discreet references to the war in Europe, but this looming danger does little to upset the daily life of Belham. Clem Miniver is a prosperous architect, and his devoted wife, Kay, is the adoring mother of Vin, a student at Oxford, and two younger children. The opening of the film shows Mrs. Miniver shopping for a hat and feeling guilty about her extravagance, only to learn later that her husband bought a new car that same day. While returning home from the city with her purchase, she encounters the vicar, who has just indulged his own passion by buying a box of cigars. On the train, they are joined by Lady Beldon, Belham's dominant figure, who complains about the crowds and laments that, these days, “Everyone is trying to be better than their betters…. No wonder Germany is arming.” Her remark is funny, but it sounds an ominous note.

  The centerpiece of the film is the annual flower show. Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers), the stationmaster, has the audacity to enter his rose against Lady Beldon's, which wins every year. Early in the film, when Mrs. Miniver returns from her shopping trip, Ballard persuades her to come see his rose, which is on display in his office. He shyly asks if he can name the rose for her, because “you've always had time to stop and have a word with me—and I always waited for you to come home, and you remind me of the flower.
” The flower-show competition represents the British class system, whose strictures seem to be cheerfully accepted in the film but whose disintegration Wyler clearly endorses. Lady Beldon's eventual gracious acceptance of the superiority of Ballard's rose, in effect, Americanizes her, as it symbolizes the recognition that class structure is a thing of the past. By that time, she has also accepted Vin Miniver as a suitable fiancé for her granddaughter, Carol. Indeed, this section of the film has all the elements of a story by Wyler's friend Frank Capra.

  The centrality of the rose as an emblem of England itself is also supported by Ballard's retort to a friend, who claims that if war comes, there will be no flower show. The stationmaster replies, “You might as well say good-bye to England. There will always be roses.” Wyler has shown his penchant for evocative natural images before (in These Three, Come and Get It, and The Little Foxes), and he will later utilize this motif most effectively in Friendly Persuasion, a pacifist film made after the war. Here, the rose serves as a symbol not only of England but also of a world that will be effectively destroyed by the war. Despite the fairy-tale images and Wyler's pro-war sentiments, the film contains hints of his characteristic doubts about the world's direction after the war. This sense of foreboding would be confirmed by the dark tone of many of his postwar films and the elegiac tone (first seen here) of others, such as Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, and Funny Girl.

  Wyler's careful manipulation of this symbolism is evident in the scene in which Ballard invites Mrs. Miniver to look at his rose. They walk into his office, where the rose stands in a vase on a ledge with a mirror behind it. Wyler employs his characteristic frame-within-a-frame composition, momentarily focusing on Ballard's reflection in the mirror as he walks toward the rose. The stationmaster then signals Mrs. Miniver to approach the rose. She gazes at it with admiration, pronouncing it the loveliest rose she has ever seen. Then, as she moves forward to smell it, Wyler catches Ballard in the mirror again and—in a typically suggestive composition—shows Mrs. Miniver smelling the rose while she seems to be staring at Ballard's face in the mirror. Ballard will win the rose competition, but a short time later, he will be killed in the Blitz. Wyler thus embodies both the ideal of rural England and its imminent destruction in one shot. On viewing the film a second time, one cannot help but see both Ballard's triumph and his death in that single image.