William Wyler

by Gabriel Miller

  Wyler was, of course, referring to his own childhood memories of growing up in a region with allegiances to two countries and to parents of different nationalities. He had been educated in schools run by both sides, and at the age of twenty, he had immigrated to another country and eventually participated in a war against one of the countries occupying the borderland of his childhood.

  This personal history of mixed allegiances and contradictory experiences made Wyler naturally sympathetic to a project exploring divided loyalties—in this case, pacifist Quakers who are torn between their religious beliefs and the need to protect their homes during wartime. Although Wyler's film has sometimes been described as an homage to pacifism, it is hardly that; his dramatic framings and editing invariably undercut its value as a viable philosophy in today's world. The film's idyllic mood reflects Wyler's fondness for the Birdwells’ way of life, but he repeatedly summons that mood in such a way as to emphasize that these scenes function more as a wish-fulfillment dream than a realistic portrait of life.

  Just after needlepoint credits transition to the Birdwell home, Wyler introduces a note of discord by showing the house reflected upside down in a stream. The opening scene, narrated by Little Jess, is a comic sequence that introduces the ongoing rivalry between him and Samantha, Eliza's pet goose. Little Jess, who is dressed to go to Sunday meeting, warily watches Samantha, who is waiting for a chance to bite him. When she eventually succeeds, the child threatens to kill the goose but is stopped by his mother, who chides him about his violent tendencies. Little Jess then goes to play with his older brother, Josh, and the boys pretend that they are shooting Confederate soldiers. These two scenes, though played for comedy, immediately introduce the subject of war and the human tendency toward violence, which the Quaker religion preaches against.

  Wyler soon injects another discordant note when he pictures the Quakers entering the meetinghouse. He cuts inside to a shot of the congregants walking into a space where the women are seated to the left and the men to the right. As the camera pulls back to show each section outlined by the beams of the building, this frame within a frame suggests that the Quakers are trapped by their beliefs, which will soon be severely tested. The camera then pans around the meetinghouse, finding some of the Quakers deep in meditation; others, like Jess, seem bored. When one of the children looks out a window, Wyler cuts to the inside of a nearby Methodist church, where the spirited congregants are singing a hymn. This lively scene is followed by a cut back to the meetinghouse, where Wyler again utilizes the same beam framing that seems to confine the Quakers in the passivity of their quiet faith. The contrast is striking: the Quakers appear severe and unyielding compared with their more joyful and expressive neighbors.

  The silence of the meetinghouse is broken when an elderly woman who recently celebrated her eightieth birthday reads from Proverbs: “Who so hearkeneth to Me, shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” This homily is followed shortly by a long shot of the building's exterior, where a buggy driven by two soldiers is pulling up to the front door. As Major Harvey steps out and enters, Wyler cuts to a medium-long shot of him at the front of the meetinghouse, with the congregants on either side; his very presence seems ominous. After talking about the war and the sacrifices made by thousands of people in the service of the Union, he asks the Quakers to pitch in to fight against slavery. Eliza answers that while her people oppose slavery, they are also against killing men to free others. The officer then asks if they are willing to stand by and let others fight for them. This challenge temporarily silences the congregation.

  When Major Harvey asks Josh if he will fight, the young man replies, “I don't know.” Purdy, another congregant, berates Josh for wavering in his faith and then announces that nothing, not even a threat to his family, could push him to violence against his fellow man. Jess, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, reveals his own doubts but concludes that if presented with a situation in which his family's safety was at stake, he hoped the Lord would show him the way. Unable to recruit any volunteers, Harvey leaves, and the camera follows him as he limps toward the door past the silent congregation. Wyler's framing of the service—from the elderly woman's reading of Proverbs to the entrance of the soldier, who is passionate about the need to fight, and the ensuing discussion of war as a defensive action—points to the director's ambivalence toward the Quakers’ philosophy. While their aims may be laudatory, their ideals are seemingly out of the sync with the world they live in. This perception is hammered home later when Purdy does a complete about-face and becomes a vocal advocate for violent revenge after his farm is plundered and burned.11

  Much of the film, however, is too lighthearted to be taken seriously as an examination of the moral issue it raises. The screenwriters retain some of the incidents from West's story collection and weave them into more integrated plot elements. The film deals humorously with Jess and Eliza's disagreement over his purchase of an organ, with Jess and Sam's friendly competition in racing their horse and buggies to church, and with Little Jess's confrontations with Samantha the goose. There is also a comic interlude—in which Jess and Josh visit the Widow Hudspeth (Marjorie Main) and her three daughters—that is so broad that West detested it. In To See a Dream, she writes that she “cannot stomach” it, but “Mr. Wyler loves [it] with the unreasoning infatuation of a Titania for Bottom.” She goes on to describe his treatment of the incident, which is depicted much differently in the book, as “Dogpatch exaggeration.”12

  The central failure of Friendly Persuasion, however, is that, unlike to Mrs. Miniver, it does not effectively integrate the war and its aftermath into the narrative. In the earlier film, the war becomes central to the family's story: Clem and his motorboat take part in the evacuation of Dunkirk, Mrs. Miniver captures a German pilot, Vin joins the RAF, and his wife (a character invented for the film) is killed during an air raid. Even the Miniver home is bombed and partially destroyed. In Friendly Persuasion, by contrast, the war remains peripheral—even when the conflict arrives on the Birdwells’ doorstep, it has little lasting effect. This distancing is found in the book as well, but the filmmakers explicitly set out to make more of a point of how war affects the Quakers’ pacifism.

  In light of Wyler's professed interest in the war theme, it seems strange that he eliminated from the film various references to it in the West-Wyler final shooting script—especially those that prepare the audience for Josh's decision to take part in the battle to protect his town. For instance, after hiding from the raiders at the Hudspeths’ farm, Josh has to be reassured by his father that he is not a coward. Another scene features Gard, Sam Jordan's son (soon to be engaged to Mattie Birdwell), who returns home wounded from the war: Josh asks Gard if he hates him for not fighting. In a scene with Enoch (a runaway slave who works on the farm), Josh talks about dying. They hear sounds that Enoch thinks might be bushwhackers, and Josh takes a horse to see what is going on. This bold action, in defiance of his parents’ warning to avoid any potential violence, represents a significant move toward his decision to fight. That scene is followed by another in which Josh encounters some refugees who have been displaced from their homes and others who are wounded. If Wyler wanted to make a strong argument about the compelling realities of war, one wonders why he cut these sequences.

  In the film, however, Josh does come into conflict with his mother over his decision to fight. His doubts, as reflected in the Sunday meeting scene described earlier, have now hardened into certainty. West's point—that pacifism is not a rule but a matter of conscience for Quakers—is effectively demonstrated in the scenes between Josh and his parents. While Eliza is firmly opposed to Josh's participation in the war, Jess believes it would be wrong to interfere in his son's decision; as he tells his wife, “I am his father, not his conscience.” He also tells Josh that if he has a “sword in his heart,” he “should pull it out and use it.” As he often does in scenes of family conflict, Wyler presents this discussion in a three-shot around the kitch
en table, with Josh in the middle, thus avoiding the impression of prioritizing one position over the other.

  When Josh comes down from his bedroom on the morning he is supposed to leave, Wyler utilizes a modified deep focus, showing Jess and Eliza in the kitchen in the rear of the frame, while the staircase dominates the camera's gaze. As Josh descends, only his hand holding a rifle is seen at first, as if that image represents his new identity. Eliza moves near him, her eyes on the gun, and Wyler creates another three-shot, with Jess in the rear. Then, as he bids farewell to his parents, Josh is again placed in the center of a three-shot—Eliza stands with her back to her son, while Jess, his hand on his son's shoulder, says, “God bless thee.”

  Considering its importance to Wyler's conception, the battle sequence is especially disappointing. West's “The Battle of Finney's Ford” sidesteps the issue of Josh killing anyone in the war by having him fall off a cliff and crack his skull. His battle experience is thus turned into a pratfall, and all the fighting is over by the time he wakes up. In Wyler's version, however, Josh does fight, killing Confederate soldiers, and he is wounded. That scene, in addition to one created for the film to introduce the runaway slave Enoch (Joel Fluellen), embodies Wyler's belief that pacifism is no defense against hatred and racism. Hearing rumors of advancing Confederate troops, Enoch asks Jess for a gun, declaring that he would rather die fighting than return to the South as a slave.

  Josh's wounding is not shown. Instead, Wyler cuts from the battle to Josh's riderless horse returning to the Birdwell farm, which motivates Jess to retrieve his rifle from a closet. Wyler's composition is interesting here: As Jess holds his rifle, Eliza enters the house at the left of the screen. The door seems to cut the frame in half, emphasizing the gulf between Eliza's pacifist domesticity (she is in the kitchen) and Jess's decision to take up arms and fight. She begs him not to go, but he persists, and Wyler's camera follows Jess as he takes on the heroic demeanor of Gary Cooper—riding away on his horse, rifle in hand, in a shot that resembles a number of similar images from The Westerner.

  On his way to find Josh, Jess discovers his friend Sam Jordan, who has been shot; after a few words, Sam dies in Jess's arms. The Confederate soldier who shot Sam then returns to steal his horse and shoots at Jess but misses. Jess wrestles the gun away from him and points it at his stomach. Then, after a poignant moment of decision, Jess tells the soldier to go, assuring him, “I'll not harm thee.” With a beatific look on his face and Dmitri Tiomkin's music swelling in full angelic mode, the soldier walks slowly toward the camera and out of the frame as Cooper stands next to a tree in the distance, holding his rifle and looking noble. Wyler would use such sequences more effectively when depicting Christ in Ben-Hur. Here, the composition just seems ponderous, and the attempt at grandeur falls flat.

  The battle scenes are more protracted and more fully developed in the script. There, a sergeant who is stationed next to Josh is killed immediately after the first battle begins, which motivates Josh to shoot and kill. Another battle scene follows, and in a series of revised pages, the writers have Josh kill a rebel soldier. Another intense battle is detailed, and on another revised page, the screenwriters add, “Josh is a fighter now.” in the act of reloading his rifle, he is hit and “badly wounded.”13

  The final shooting script also features a gallant Gary Cooperish scene in which Jess, on horseback, scoops up a wounded rebel soldier, saving him from an oncoming horse. There is another cut to the Confederate camp, where a captain tells the lieutenant in charge that Morgan, the commanding officer, has decided to bypass the town of Vernon and pull out. This announcement signals the end of the conflict—at least in the Quakers’ vicinity. The scene of Jess saving the wounded Confederate soldier was important to West, and in July 1955 she explained to Wyler why it was thematically essential: “It will establish what the audience needs to know 1) that Jess is no coward 2) that he is concerned with, involved with the lives of human kind, not just his family—that his decision not to fight is not negative…. He not only doesn't want to kill—he wants to save. And [in] addition to all this—the scene will be beautiful and exciting to see.”14 Wyler apparently did not agree, since the scene does not appear in the finished film.

  The film ends almost the same way it began, with the Birdwells getting ready for Sunday meeting. The war seems to have had little effect on the idyllic appearance of either the Birdwell home or the surrounding countryside. The notable changes between “then” and “now” are slight: Eliza has allowed Jess to move the organ from the attic to the living area, Josh's arm is in a sling, and Little Jess has made friends with Samantha. Gard Jordan (Mark Richman), who proposed to Mattie earlier, is now escorting her to church. Unlike war's profound effect on the Minivers, it seems to have been only a slight inconvenience in the lives of the Birdwells.

  Again, the final shooting script's ending is more poignant and powerful. There, Josh and his father have an important exchange when Jess finds his son lying wounded on the battlefield:

  JOSH: Father, did thee fight?

  JESS: No, Josh…I didn't fight…and thee did. We both lived up to all the Light we had. That's all that's asked of us.15

  The script's final scene, which follows that moment of reconciliation, finds the Birdwells and Enoch in the Methodist church, where the minister reads off the names of those who have died, including Sam Jordan. Then he asks the congregation to rise, and Jess is shown singing “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” Eliza, who was formerly opposed to all music and objected to having an organ in her house, looks on and smiles. Mattie is seated by Gard, who is in mourning for his father. Showing the Birdwells and Enoch attending a Methodist church to honor Sam's memory offers a profound image of the changes not only in one family but also in the country.16

  Friendly Persuasion's postproduction life proved to be more dramatic and contentious than its story. Because Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler had rewritten much of Michael Wilson's original script, Wyler suggested on February 8, 1956, that the screenplay credit should read, “Screenplay by Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler from the book by Jessamyn West.”17 Wilson protested, and the dispute was submitted to the Writers’ Guild. On March 9 the guild informed Allied Artists that the credits should read: “Screenplay by Michael Wilson from the book by Jessamyn West.” However, the guild also informed the studio that, according to its bylaws, if a screenwriter had ever lied about being a member of the Communist Party or invoked the Fifth Amendment—which Wilson had done—Allied did not have to give him screenplay credit. The studio then informed the guild that it had decided against giving screenplay credit to anyone. The dispute went public when Wilson received a Writers’ Guild award for best screenplay and an Oscar nomination (the Academy subsequently disqualified him). Wilson then sued Wyler, Allied Artists, and Liberty Films over the denial of credit, asking for $250,000 in damages.

  Wyler was angry and disgusted by this controversy. He urged Allied to appeal the guild's decision and offered a compromise that would give all three writers credit. The studio, however, was worried that if Wilson's name appeared onscreen, the film would be picketed by the American Legion, adversely affecting its profit margin. Friendly Persuasion thus became the only film in Hollywood history to be released with no screenplay credit at all—although, when the DVD version was released in 2001, Wilson was credited as the sole screenwriter, per the guild's ruling. Wyler, meanwhile, remained frustrated that West and his brother had been deprived of credit and of a potential Oscar nomination. (The script was indeed nominated, but with no names attached.) Wyler complained to Madsen: “If only the Guild had agreed to a three-way credit, Allied wouldn't have objected and perhaps the American Legion would have overlooked it. It was a damn pity because I think all three might have gotten Oscar nominations, because that was the year Dalton Trumbo won under a false name.”18

  As Wilson's lawsuit progressed, Wyler filed a deposition in which he defended his original position on the awarding of screenplay credit. He reiterated
that Wilson's narrative emphasis had been wrong “and that in particular the second part of the script entirely avoided the issue by treatment in comedy terms and never bringing the principal character to his ultimate test, which is now the dramatic highlight of the picture.” This is an interesting statement in light of the changes Wyler made to the West-Wyler script, which kept the comic emphasis of the film as well as including a test for the hero. He went on to state, “I believe that a viewing of the so-called shooting script…would not actually show the proper results, since a good deal of the material that is in the final version of the picture was actually contributed during the shooting, by Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler.”19 This is certainly true, because the final film, as discussed earlier, differs markedly from the final shooting script. Stuart Millar seconded Wyler in his deposition, stating that West and Wyler had essentially written the entire second half of the film, as well as many scenes in the first half.20

  Wyler has been accused of appeasing the blacklisters by keeping Wilson's name off the screen, and his initial decision to do so is indeed puzzling. An examination of Wilson's scripts clearly shows that he contributed substantially to the finished film.21 Numerous incidents and the lighthearted tone that dominates the first half of the film are derived from his script. Wyler is correct in asserting that significant changes were made, especially in the war sequences, but his refusal to acknowledge Wilson's contributions does not seem justified.