William Wyler

by Gabriel Miller

  Despite the seeming joie de vivre exhibited in his film, Wyler was experiencing political problems of his own while in Rome. Those problems stemmed in part from his insistence on using Lester Koenig, who was blacklisted, as an associate producer on The Heiress, Detective Story, and Carrie. He also insisted on bringing Koenig to Rome to work on Roman Holiday. In December 1952 the right-wing newsletter Counterattack reported that Wyler invited two communists to the wrap party for that film. In January 1953 Wyler's close friend Paul Kohner wrote to inform him that “a very careful check [is] being made on all of your activities and associations in Europe,” including a meeting Wyler had attended in Switzerland with Irwin Shaw, Lester Koenig, Bernard Vorhaus, Joe Losey, and Bob Parrish. Kohner urged Wyler “not to take this thing lightly” and to talk with John Huston, who had experienced “the same situation with MOULIN ROUGE.” Kohner warned his friend of potential difficulties in getting backing for his next film if he did not deal more effectively with this delicate situation, and he recommended that Wyler speak with an attorney, Arthur Jacobs, who had handled things for John Huston and José Ferrer.36 In fact, Jacobs had written to Kohner the day before, suggesting, “I feel that I can, with Mr. Wyler's cooperation, alleviate any pressure that may be brought upon him now, or any unpleasant action against him that may be contemplated.” Jacobs even offered to fly to Europe to meet with Wyler, provided Wyler would cover his expenses.37

  Three weeks later, Kohner reiterated that the fate of Wyler's film was secondary to “your own personal standing and the sooner you start to get yourself cleared like all the others are doing, the better it will be for you.” He told his friend, “Once what Talli [Wyler's wife] calls ‘such a clean-up job’ is done, if it is done properly and right, it should be good for all time. The very fact that your movements over there are being reported, whether correctly or incorrectly, should indicate to you that this situation is a serious one.” Kohner again mentioned John Huston's situation, which he considered analogous to Wyler's: Huston, though aware that he was listed in the “Legion Magazine,” had not thought it necessary to do anything about the implications of that listing. Kohner again counseled Wyler to speak with Huston, whom Jacobs had managed to convince of the gravity of his situation. “But the fact is that before he [Huston] met with these people here, he was not aware of the work they were doing and was also not aware of how he was lured into organizations and causes which definitely now have been exposed as communistic fronts.”38

  Wyler soon decided to take the advice he was getting. In 1953 Wyler was also corresponding with Art Arthur, executive secretary of the Motion Picture Industry Council, in an effort to clear his name. In a letter to Wyler, Arthur indicated that he had set up a meeting between the director and labor leader Roy Brewer, a studio-approved right-wing mediator, to discuss clearing his name. A few days later, he wrote to Wyler about the HUAC's list of “all in Hollywood who have been identified under oath as Communists up to the end of 1952,” adding that the list did not include “the names of people who might have been innocently or unintentionally associated with the committee.” He named John Garfield and José Ferrer as examples of the former and urged Wyler to use the list as a guide in an effort to remember “who might have been named and under what circumstances.”39 The director, however, was not quite out of the woods.

  Y. Frank Freeman, production chief at Paramount, had berated Wyler for his careless behavior: “It is hard for anyone to understand how you would have these men as your guests knowing their record. You and I have discussed the Communist problem on several occasions.”40 In February 1954 he drafted a lengthy reply (never sent), making it clear that his political activism had always revolved around two principles: “Up to 1945: to fight Nazism and Facism [sic] abroad. After 1945: to fight for the preservation of civil liberties at home.” Wyler was adamant about his opposition to communism: “I was always fundamentally opposed to Communism and all its basic teachings, though not actively engaged in opposing it…. I strongly insist that any activity of mine in connection with, or in support of, Communist front organizations has been with the sincere belief that I was furthering one or another of the above two purposes, which I pursued with unvarying consistency.” He went on to deny that communists were attempting to gain control of the Screen Directors’ Guild and spent considerable time discussing his involvement with the Committee for the First Amendment. His evaluation of the CFA's work and aims was filled with ambivalence, and he admitted having misgivings about the experience: “Many of us who joined sincerely, with the highest motives, have often regretted the whole thing.” He also tried to distance himself from the Hollywood Ten. He defended the CFA for standing up for the First Amendment but then backpedaled by writing that the Supreme Court decision rendered that belief “erroneous.” He went even further, complimenting the present House committee for acting with “decorum” and admitting that if the Thomas Committee had “conducted itself with dignity,” the CFA might have had no reason to oppose it. He remained steadfast in his defense of those among the Ten who were not communists but “were sacrificing themselves for a principle. It was these men whom I was anxious to defend.”41

  The letter that Wyler finally mailed to Freeman, dated May 3, 1954, was shorter, less detailed, and less conciliatory. He was still adamant about his anticommunism, however: “I hate and oppose any form of dictatorship anywhere in the world. This of course includes the most dangerous of these: Communism.” He maintained that his participation in or support of certain organizations and activities had been based on “the sincere belief that I was either fighting Nazism abroad or helping preserve our civil liberties at home.” He admitted that some of these causes did not serve their avowed purpose, and he was wrong to lend his name to them: specifically, he cited his sponsorship of the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace and his signing of an amicus curiae brief on behalf of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. He defended his work with the CFA: “Most of us were motivated by a desire to defend what we believed to be basic American freedoms. We had no desire or intensions of defending Communists and Communism.” Consistent with his earlier draft, he regretted his support of the Hollywood Ten, asserting that he had not known that many of them were indeed communists and that if he had known “the facts that ultimately developed, I am sure, I would have done nothing to help them.”42 There are no other documents in Wyler's files on this issue. Whether the meeting with Brewer and the letter to Freeman cleared him is not completely clear. The attacks on Wyler by anticommunist groups, however, seem to have ceased.

  Although the red-baiting started to ease off in 1954, after the Senate censured McCarthy, Lester Koenig did lose credit as Wyler's associate producer and screenwriter for Roman Holiday. Koenig had taken the Fifth in an earlier HUAC hearing, and his name had made the blacklist even before he left for Rome with Wyler to work on the film. Paramount wanted to fire Koenig, but Wyler interceded, convincing the studio that Koenig was essential to the production. In a letter written to defend his position after the film was released, Wyler reminded Freeman that Koenig was the only person, other than himself, who was familiar with the three script versions, “as well as much other material, all of which had to be put together into the final shooting script.”43 Koenig had been allowed to go to Rome with the understanding that he would testify upon his return. When he refused to do so, Paramount dropped his name from the released film, over Wyler's objections.

  When Wyler returned to Hollywood in 1953, his political problems had soured his mood, and his last film for Paramount, The Desperate Hours, reflects that state of mind. Like Detective Story, it is an indoor piece, but here, the action is set in a suburban home, only occasionally shifting to scenes outside the house. Unlike Roman Holiday, which was filmed on location, The Desperate Hours was shot entirely on Paramount's sound stages—the studio even built a seven-room house to Wyler's specifications. This would be Wyler's last black-and-white film for some time, although he utilized Vista-Vision, a widescreen f
ormat developed in the 1950s to differentiate Hollywood's products from television.

  Joseph Hayes's novel The Desperate Hours became one of the hottest literary properties in 1954 (even before it was published). The book was first serialized in Collier's magazine; it was then chosen as the main selection of the Literary Guild Book Club and eventually became a best seller. There was a bidding war for the film rights, and one of the most prominent seekers was Humphrey Bogart, who wanted to produce and star in the film for his Santana Productions. Although Bogart did not acquire the rights, he did end up costarring in the film. Wyler, who had read the unpublished manuscript and coveted the property, asked Paramount to top any bid. Hayes signed a deal with Paramount for $50,000 against a percentage of the gross. The studio also agreed to let him write the screenplay, and Hayes was excited at the prospect of working with Wyler. Hayes eventually signed another contract to turn his book into a Broadway play. Due to a strange confluence of events, the play was not written until after the film was completed, but the film was not released until after the play had closed.

  Despite the fact that Hayes's theatrical version came after the making of the film, the two adaptations share a similar structure. The story revolves around three escaped convicts who terrorize a suburban family of four, holding them hostage while awaiting the arrival of their getaway money. The film's action takes place primarily in the Hilliard home, although there are a number of scenes in the police station, where both local and federal officers are looking for Glenn Griffin, the mastermind behind the escape. The irony of this variation on the standard sequence of composition is that while the screenplay is not technically an adaptation of a play, its confined setting makes the plot seem stage bound, and Wyler is unable to exploit the drama and excitement inherent in the basic situation.

  Wyler never talked much about The Desperate Hours because, in all likelihood, he was dissatisfied with it. One problem was that he did not get the cast he wanted. His first choice for the role of Dan Hilliard, the father and protagonist, was Spencer Tracy. When Bogart was cast as Glenn Griffin, however, the two actors could not agree on top billing, and Tracy dropped out. Wyler's backup choices were Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda, but he could not secure their services either. Finally, at the suggestion of Don Hartman, who had recently become Paramount's head of production, Wyler settled for Fredric March, who had won an Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives. Meanwhile, Wyler's first choice for the convict was not Bogart but either Marlon Brando or James Dean—believing that a much younger actor would be more menacing. At Hayes's urging, however, he eventually decided that having a middle-aged convict mirror the father's maturity—allowing the two to play off each other—would add dramatic value and tension to the film.44 Wyler shot the film in eight weeks, beginning in mid-October 1954 and finishing in mid-December. The play opened in New Haven a month later and premiered on Broadway in February 1955.

  Like Detective Story, this film reflects the anxieties and paranoia of 1950s America. Michael Anderegg likens The Desperate Hours to Donald Siegel's The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), which some critics have read as a parable of the incursion of Soviet communism, fueled by the HUAC's investigations of communist infiltration into various aspects of American life. He notes, however, that Wyler's suburban family represents a “far less metaphysical embodiment than Siegel's aliens.”45 Certainly, the HUAC associations implicit in Hayes's plot were not lost on Wyler, but his film has a broader political message. Wyler's concern for America at this time—and the likely message of Siegel's film as well—is his fear of conformity and the resultant loss of individuality. As Wyler indicated in his letter to Freeman, the primary motivation for his political activism was standing up for individual liberty. The Desperate Hours is a parable, warning against the use of force as a mechanism of social control.

  In his study of 1950s films, Peter Biskind identifies a group of movies that deal with the “enemy within.” These, he notes, are realistic films that portray aliens inside society, taking their cue from the headlines of the day. The “troublemakers” in these films are communists, “but also gangsters, juvenile delinquents, and minorities.” Biskind discusses various approaches to the threat posed by these “aliens,” including the approach of the pluralists, who rejected force as an answer because “it contradicted the permissive, consensual model of society.” The pluralists believed that, in America, “power was dispersed among the people,” and they rejected force as an instrument of social control because it did not work. “It made things worse, drove dissidents into rebellion, and over the long haul it destabilized society.”46

  The Desperate Hours, with its repudiation of violence, seems to belong in this category. At its climax, as Dan Hilliard faces Griffin with a loaded gun, the criminal taunts him, daring him to shoot. Dan realizes that he cannot do it—he understands that he is not a killer. Ultimately, he triumphs because he is resourceful and summons up the courage to confront a crisis. Instead of shooting his adversary, he slaps Griffin and orders him out of the house. The last line of the play (not included in the film) is spoken by Carson, an FBI agent: “World's full of Hilliards.” It is a valedictory to the ordinary American citizen who is resourceful, ethical, and courageous. Hayes goes even further in his novel: “Magnificence. That was the word. You'd never think of applying it to Dan Hilliard and his wife. But it applied. Maybe you didn't think of it normally because the chips weren't down but when the chips were down—.”47 Wyler does not rely on any character to express these thoughts directly, but presumably, his audience is feeling them. And indeed, it may have been reasonable to expect such a clear-cut recognition of everyman's heroism in 1955, when the film was released, although today's audience is likely to react far more ambivalently.

  In the 1950s, the rise of suburbia in America was in full swing. As reflected in Best Years, countless soldiers had returned from the war and were trying to reintegrate into American life—often by marrying and starting families. In Kantor's novel, Al Stephenson has a home in the suburbs, while Fred and Peggy aspire to live in a similar place. Fred eventually accepts a job building suburban homes; presumably, he and Peggy will move into such a home someday. That promised future is also depicted by Wyler in The Desperate Hours, with Frederic March providing a personal link between the two films.

  Wyler's suburbs are marked by a lack of individuality. Many of the houses built after the war were identical, prefabricated structures, and the Hilliards’ home looks like all the others on the street. Unlike Hayes, who opens his play in the police station, Wyler begins the film by focusing on a suburban street, the sun down on shining on a tranquil, quiet neighborhood. The placid street scene and the Hilliards’ tidy home are no different from the environs of the suburban families presented in countless television dramas of the time. This banal setting quickly establishes Wyler's focus on the peaceful conformity of American life and the sanctity of the nuclear family.

  The Hilliards, however, possess a gun—a disturbing image that undercuts the seeming serenity of their surroundings. Dan hides this weapon from his son, Ralphie, but its mere presence indicates that the family anticipates trouble. As both the play and the film make clear, however, they are totally unprepared for the reality of such an event. When a band of escaped convicts suddenly takes up residence in their midst, the utility of the suburban lifestyle and the idealized American nuclear family as barriers against the invasion of “others” is revealed to be a sham. The Hilliards become prisoners in their own home, a place where they expect to exert control; the Griffin gang takes that illusion of safety away from them. Wyler's postwar America, clearly, is faced with dangers from within as well as without.

  By immediately focusing on the family, Wyler shows that attempting to shield ourselves from political reality by withdrawing into our own private worlds can have disastrous effects. This danger is dramatically represented when Eleanor Hilliard (Martha Scott) begins to straighten up the house after her family has departed for the day's activities. She is l
istening to the radio, and when news of the escaped convicts is broadcast, she switches to a music station. Eleanor, apparently, feels safe and secure in her home, the dangers of the outside world easily distanced from her. Within moments, however, that threatening reality will intrude on her peaceable kingdom. Her world and, by extension, the suburban community that embodies it will be shattered by the abrupt entrance of the convicts. Likewise, the typical American family of the 1950s tended to ignore the realities of the HUAC and the dangers of nuclear war, preferring to socialize with friends and neighbors—the insular security of their neighborhoods no more than an illusion. In reality, the Hilliards will find that they are protected by no one in their community. The arrival of Ralphie's teacher, of Cindy's boyfriend, and of Mr. Peterson, the garbage collector, will only bring them more trouble—the last resulting in Peterson's death. The Hilliards will finally learn that they are indeed alone.

  The suburban family is balanced by the criminal family. The Griffins are also a family: Glenn and Hal are brothers. Glenn looks out for his younger brother, and the play implies that they are together because of their familial tie. In the play, Glenn is described as being in his mid-twenties, with “a rather appealing boyish expression,” while Hal is younger, with a “confused, hard but somehow rather sensitive face.” The casting of Bogart (who was already ill with the cancer that would soon kill him) makes Glenn more of a father figure. He is clearly much older than Dewey Martin, who plays Hal, and he looks even older than Fredric March, whose mature status he now clearly parallels. In addition to being one of Bogart's final roles, Glenn Griffin is one of his more unsavory ones. In his first role for Wyler—as Baby Face Martin in Dead End—the character's criminality is placed in the social context of the slum environment where he grew up. Here, he is a social misfit who preys on innocent women and children, motivated by simple envy. The play implies that the Griffins grew up in an abusive home, but the social factors are only hinted at, not developed, and Wyler cut Glenn's final moment of hallucinatory reproach to his father, just before his death. Jesse Bard, the deputy sheriff who is in charge of the investigation and has dealt with Glenn Griffin before, labels him a psychopath, unfit for human society.