William Wyler

by Gabriel Miller

  Wyler may have simply felt intimidated by the government's monitoring of his affairs and the attendant pressure to be more selective about the organizations he supported and the people he worked with. His correspondence with Y. Frank Freeman at Paramount (discussed in chapter 14) shows Wyler's more conciliatory mood and indicates a willingness to consider the consequences of his political actions. A note in Wyler's file on Friendly Persuasion indicates that he spoke with Freeman about the Wilson matter on April 8, 1954, and that the studio chief assured him that “no screen credit need be given Michael Wilson, even if his script is used.”22 In that same file is an article clipped from Variety detailing how the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals had criticized Samuel Goldwyn, Wyler's former boss, for purchasing the rights to Guys and Dolls. That hit musical had been coauthored by Abe Burrows, who was named in the alliance's publication the Vigil for his “vague testimony and for being identified as a Communist by two admitted former Communists.” This episode may have emboldened Wyler to deny credit to Wilson.

  When Wilson died in 1978, his obituary in the Los Angeles Times mentioned the dispute, and Wyler wrote a letter, published in the paper, in which he recounted his revised opinion of the screen credit controversy:

  The fact is that I only objected that Wilson be acknowledged as the film's only screenwriter. Wilson's screenplay…was written for another producer-director years before I undertook to make the film. Subsequently, two other writers, namely Jessamyn West and Robert Wyler together rewrote parts of Wilson's screenplay contributing significantly to the final picture and I felt their work should be acknowledged as well as Wilson's. So I proposed that all three names receive credit for the screenplay with Wilson's name in first place, thereby recognizing him as the “principal” screenwriter. When the Writers’ Guild awarded Wilson exclusive solo credit, then the film's financiers and distributors—Allied Artists Corp—decided to release the film with no screenplay credit whatsoever, a decision I regretted but had no control over.23

  Friendly Persuasion opened at Radio City Music Hall on November 1, 1956, and like Roman Holiday, it received respectable but not glowing reviews. The film did well at the box office but was not the unqualified hit Allied Artists had expected. In 1957 Wyler took the picture to the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palm d'Or as the festival's best film.

  The film had a curious afterlife. At the request of the Soviet Union, and with the blessing of the U.S. State Department, Wyler took Friendly Persuasion to Moscow in 1960, where it was presented as a symbolic remedy to the Cold War. Then, almost thirty years later—at the advent of glasnost—President Ronald Reagan (whose politics Wyler detested) gave a videocassette of Friendly Persuasion to Mikhail Gorbachev. In a toast, Reagan lauded the film for showing not only the horrors and tragedy of war but also “the problems of pacifism, the nobility of patriotism, as well as the love of peace.”24 When the New York Times printed the text of Reagan's remarks, it occasioned some letters noting the red-baiting president's hypocrisy in praising a film written by a blacklisted communist sympathizer. The final irony (apparently lost on Wilson's supporters) was, as Jan Herman points out, that Josh's agonizing decision—whether to go to war or stick to his pacifist beliefs—was Wyler's focus, not Wilson's.25

  Wyler's next film would explore similar issues with the same muddled results, but within the generic conventions of the western. Wyler had not made a film in that genre since 1940's The Westerner with Gary Cooper. Now, in the spirit of the times, he would make a “big” western. By the mid-1950s, television had absorbed a substantial portion of the movie audience. In an effort to compete, theatrical films became bigger and more expensive as directors began experimenting with Technicolor, Cinerama, CinemaScope, and Technorama. To shoot The Big Country, Wyler hired Franz Planer, and together they decided to make the film in Technorama and Technicolor.

  Wanting to retain full artistic control of his projects, Wyler decided to form a partnership with Gregory Peck, who had become a close friend since their work on Roman Holiday. Their first venture was supposed to be a comedy, however, not a western. In December 1957 Peck announced that they would make a film about an art heist from the Prado museum in Madrid, and they hired Michael and Fay Kanin (Woman of the Year) to write a script. The screenplay proved unsatisfactory, and the project was shelved—though Wyler would later make a similar film, How to Steal a Million, with Audrey Hepburn (Peck's Roman Holiday costar) in Paris.

  While that first project was unraveling, James Webb, a prolific writer of westerns (Vera Cruz and Apache; he would later write How the West Was Won and Cheyenne Autumn) brought to Peck's attention a story by Donald Hamilton, “Ambush at Blanco Canyon,” which had been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and later expanded into a novel titled The Big Country. Peck showed the story to Wyler, noting that it had at least six good parts and was “an anti-macho western.”26 Wyler liked the project, and the two friends divided up their responsibilities and formed two separate production companies—Wyler's was called World Wide Productions, and Peck's was Anthony Productions. Wyler would be in charge of artistic matters, while Peck, in addition to having casting and script approval, would choose the livestock, horses, and riders. Peck, who also had a development deal with United Artists, arranged for that studio to finance and distribute the film.

  Again, Wyler had problems with the script. Five writers were listed on the final credits, including Robert Wyler and Jessamyn West; Leon Uris (uncredited) also worked on the script. Ironically, the Writers’ Guild of America, successor to the Screen Writers’ Guild, would be called on to arbitrate the credits on this film (as the latter had done on Friendly Persuasion), although Wyler claimed to have little recollection about who had written what. Donald Hamilton was originally hired to adapt his story, though he warned Wyler and Peck that he had no real screenwriting experience. When this proved to be a problem, the producers turned to Sy Bartlett, who had helped Wyler get into the air force and was now a screenwriter working with Peck. Robert Wilder, whose name is also on the credits, was a novelist (Flamingo Road) and a friend of Robert Wyler's.

  Wyler assembled a big-time cast to complement the size of the picture. In addition to Peck, he signed Burl ives, fresh from his stage success as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (a role he would repeat in the film) to play Rufus Hannassey; Charles Bickford, who had not worked for Wyler since Hell's Heroes, to play Henry Terrill, patriarch of the family feuding with the Hannasseys; Carroll Baker as Pat Terrill, who is engaged to Peck's character Jim McKay; and Jean Simmons as Julie Maragon, who owns the water supply the two families are feuding over. The final important role, Steve Leech (McKay'a antagonist), was offered to Charlton Heston. Already a star and a leading man who had just triumphed as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, Heston decided to pass because, in his opinion, at least three parts in the film were better than the one being offered to him. In his autobiography, Heston elaborated:

  I was still very preoccupied with the size and centrality of my part…. Is it better to have a good part in an important film, or the best part in an OK film? I know the answer to that now…. I didn't then. I called Herman [his agent], “Look I know this is a major movie, and it's a very good script, but my part isn't very good. We're getting a lot of offers now anyway. I'll pass on this one.”

  “Kid,” he said, “you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You have an offer to work with Gregory Peck and for maybe the best director in film, and you're worrying the part isn't good enough for you? Don't you know that actors take parts with Wyler without even reading the damn script? I'm telling you, you have to do this picture!”27

  Heston agreed, and Wyler had his cast.

  United Artists agreed to a $2.8 million budget for the film. The shoot, which started in July 1958 and lasted four months, was done on two major locations. At one, near Stockton, California, Wyler built a ramshackle, minimal town and shot the range scenes. The other, used for the more remote
scenes, was in Red Rock Canyon and the Mojave Desert, which he had used as backdrops for Hell's Heroes almost thirty years earlier.

  The plot revolves around the feud between the families of two cattle barons. Both want to take over the Big Muddy, a spread with a bountiful water supply that is owned by the schoolmarm, Julie Maragon (Simmons). She inherited the land from her grandfather but lacks the money to work it. The Hannasseys, headed by Rufus (Ives), and the Terrills, headed by the Major (Bickford), have hated each other for as long as they can remember. Julie will not sell to either of them because she wants the water to be shared, not fought over. Within the generic plot structure of the western, the Terrills seem to be influenced by eastern values: they live in a grand, manor-like home with imported furniture, chandeliers, and carpets. The Major's daughter, Patricia (Baker), dresses well and flaunts ladylike airs; she has been back east, where she met Jim McKay (Peck), the scion of a family of ship owners. In contrast, the Hannasseys, though considerable property owners, are of a lower class; they live in a small, run-down home and dress like westerners. Rufus's son, Buck (Chuck Connors), is a drunken lout. Both Patricia and Buck are intimidated by their fathers—no mothers are evident—the difference being that Patricia worships her father to an unhealthy degree, while Buck mostly hates his.

  Arriving from the East to marry Patricia, McKay not only becomes embroiled in the feud but also finds himself at odds with the Major's foreman and surrogate son Steve Leech (Heston), who is also in love with Patricia. Leech hates McKay's eastern, gentlemanly ways, which he considers effete and unmanly. As if that were not bad enough, McKay compounds his strangeness by not believing in violence and feeling no need to prove his courage. This pacifist attitude eventually causes a falling-out with Patricia, who comes to doubt his manhood; she also belittles him for not being like her father. Meanwhile, McKay is having second thoughts about Patricia and begins to fall in love with Julie. When Patricia and McKay fight over what she perceives as her fiancé's cowardice and inability to live up to her father's example, he walks out. The feud ends when Major Terrill and Rufus Hannassey kill each other during a shoot-out in Blanco Canyon. McKay and Julie then ride off together.

  As he did in The Westerner, Wyler breaks with a number of generic conventions. He makes his hero an easterner who wears fancy clothes (including a derby hat) and does not carry a gun. Jim McKay has a seagoing heritage; he has no knowledge of the wilderness or the land—when he goes out on his own, he needs a map and a compass—and he is clearly not a man of the West. In contrast, the traditional western hero has no associations with the East, which is linked with education and culture; in fact, he is considered upright and strong precisely because he is a child of nature, uncontaminated by civilization.

  None of the westerners in Wyler's film are strong, pure, or upright—they all make McKay look admirable by comparison. Major Terrill, whose home boasts eastern influences, and Patricia, who dresses like an eastern lady, are revealed to be greedy and selfish, with no discernible redeeming qualities. The viewer is relieved when McKay leaves the Terrill home and moves into town, for he is clearly too good for them. The Hannasseys, however, are no better than their rivals. Unlike the Terrills, they have not been contaminated by eastern ways, but their status as pure westerners does not make them very sympathetic either. Their isolated, all-male lifestyle has deprived them of social graces, and Buck is a boor and a bully who, late in the film, tries to rape Julie. Rufus, though endearingly honest, straightforward, and possessed of an innate sense of proper behavior, is brutally disfigured by his hatred of the Terrills. Despite his defects, Rufus may seem preferable to the Major, but both are presented as single fathers who have not succeeded in raising admirable children.

  The other westerner, Steve Leech, is too much of a Terrill to command the sympathy of the audience. He is openly contemptuous of McKay and regularly tries to goad him into fights. In the climactic scene between the two, when McKay finally agrees to a fight, the brawl goes on for some time and concludes in a draw, with both men exhausted. Leech thereupon changes his mind about McKay, and after the fight, when the latter asks him, “Now, what did we prove?” he is unable to reply. He seems to be having second thoughts about the western code of violent behavior.

  Wyler's standing the genre on its head might have been interesting, but the script remained a problem throughout the shoot; it offered no compelling dramatic conflict and provided no ending. Since both families are essentially unsympathetic and the central love stories uninteresting, there is no one for the audience to care about. Peck brings little to his rather stiff character beyond his usual presence and dignity. Each of the other central characters has only one dimension, as Wyler no doubt recognized early on, for he shows little interest in the human drama but concentrates most of his attention on the landscape instead. (Perhaps Robert Warshow was right when he wrote that the notion of “the western” is violated when social issues become its central concern.28)

  The idea of a “big country” did seize Wyler's imagination, however, and he turns “bigness” itself into a theme. The film's most recurrent stylistic feature—repeated so often that it becomes annoying—is the contrast between big and small. It is introduced with the opening credit sequence, as a stagecoach makes its way toward town. Between close-ups of the horses’ hooves and wheels, Wyler cuts to extreme long shots of the stagecoach, which appears like a speck on a vast landscape. Then, as it approaches the town, Wyler cuts to a different angle, showing the town from the coachman's point of view. It appears remote, and that feeling is magnified by a crane shot looking down on the town, which is small and primitive and located in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing around it but space.

  Once it is introduced in this dramatic manner, however, the town—usually a major presence in westerns—is of little interest in this film. Here, the major reason for its existence seems to be that it is the home of Julie, who, significantly, has planted a garden in front of her house. During the party given by the Terrills to introduce McKay to their friends, one of the guests comments to Jim that “it's civilized out here,” though the town is obviously isolated, and it is not even clear whether there is a marshal to keep the peace. Indeed, later in the film, this judgment about being civilized seems to be contradicted when Rufus says to McKay that he would consider him a “law abiding man, if there was any law to abide by.” The filmmakers appear to be more interested in the grandeur of the land than the issue of bringing civilization to the wilderness. When McKay steps out of the stagecoach in his fancy suit, tie, and derby, accompanied by his elegant leather suitcases, he is clearly out of place. He is immediately derided by Buck and some other cowboys. Leech, who has come to pick him up, advises him to get rid of the derby, or else some cowboy will get rid of it for him. How McKay and his eastern ways will transform the area is introduced as a potential central theme, but it gets lost too often before reemerging at the end of the film.

  The contrast between the immensity and grandeur of the land and the insignificant, petty people who inhabit it frames the conflict between pacifism and violence that seems to be the film's central organizing theme. McKay, the easterner, has an aversion to settling disputes with guns or fists. As a gift for his future father-in-law, he brings his father's dueling pistols, noting that they have not been used in ten years. His peaceful ways are clearly in conflict with those of the Terrills, who believe in fighting—as do the Hannasseys. Such dualities extend throughout the film. Like the elegant McKay, the rough, violent Leech is in love with the spoiled and temperamental Patricia, who admires her father's ways and comes to despise her fiancé's views. She, in turn, is contrasted with the schoolteacher Julie, who is calm and sensible and eventually wins the love of McKay but is also pursued by the brutish Buck Hannassey. Finally, Patricia's love for her father is opposed to Buck's hatred for his own, though both relationships are presented as unnatural and problematic.

  Early in the film, McKay is taunted, especially by Leech and the Hannasseys, but he ref
uses to be drawn into fights. His behavior is disapproved of but tolerated by Patricia and the Major. Like the Birdwells, however, McKay has his limits. After an argument with Patricia over his nonviolent philosophy, he decides to move out of the Terrill house. Before leaving, however, he challenges Leech to a fight, which takes place at night, with no witnesses. Again, Wyler pulls his camera away from the combatants to emphasize their puny insignificance against the massive expanse of their natural surroundings. Even the music fades out, leaving only the sounds of insects and pounding fists. The silence and the seeming stillness of the moonlit scene are in stark contrast to the way such a thematically crucial scene of violence would be handled in almost any other western.

  The film's other violent scene, Buck's attempted rape of Julie, is handled in a similar manner. Wyler films this sequence inside the Hannassey house, which, unlike the Terrill mansion, is small and confined. As he so often does, Wyler includes in the frame the structure's low ceilings, creating a cramped space that seems to bear down on the inhabitants. Julie has been taken prisoner by Buck at his father's command—the goal being to get her to marry him and thus give them control of the Big Muddy. When Julie refuses, she is confined to a bedroom, and when Rufus leaves, Buck sneaks into the room. It is mostly dark, and the sequence is filmed in close-up, occasionally making the action difficult to follow. In one shot, Wyler films Buck on his knees framed through the legs of the bed. The darkness, the savagery, and Buck's caged-in posture become Wyler's symbols of a family deformed by violence and hate. When Rufus returns, he almost strangles his son, and the elemental hatred of son for father is displayed. This is Wyler's most brutal enactment of human behavior in either of his two pacifist films.

  McKay's pacifist philosophy is further tested when he rides to the Hannassey place to demand Julie's release. Rufus admires his gumption, and when Buck tries to assault Julie again, McKay immediately moves to defend her by fighting off her assailant. His impulsive resort to violence parallels that of Eliza Birdwell when she lashes out with a broomstick at a Confederate soldier to defend her pet goose, as well as Josh's need to defend his land. When Buck tries to shoot McKay, Rufus draws on his own son, telling him that he will not tolerate the shooting of an unarmed man. Rufus then insists on an old-fashioned duel, using McKay's father's pistols. Buck violates protocol by shooting before his father says “Fire,” but his bullet only grazes McKay, who then fires into the ground rather than shooting the now defenseless Buck. Unlike Leech, who seems to have learned something from McKay, Buck does not. He runs to retrieve a gun from a friend, only to be killed by his father.