30. Ibid.
31. Stine, Mother Goddam, 151.
32. Hellman to Davis, May 20, 1941, Wyler Collection.
33. Bazin, What Is Cinema? 69.
34. Affron, Star Acting, 250.
35. Anderegg, William Wyler, 106.
36. Most of Hellman's early drafts begin with Oscar shooting at Lionnet. Zan is riding across a bridge as we hear gunshots, which startle her horse; this in turn causes Oscar to miss his shot. He tells Simon to inform Zan not to ride along the road again. Even the final script (April 15, 1941, Goldwyn Papers) opens with Zan and Addie riding through Lionnet as the camera reveals the house's disrepair. Addie is commenting on how fine the place once was when Simon stops them and warns them not to drive through while Oscar is shooting. Then there is a cut to the Hubbards’ warehouse and Leo sneaking off the train.
37. The box imagery is also discussed in Affron, Star Acting.
38. Directed by William Wyler.
39. Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the Forties (New York: Zwemmer and Barnes, 1968), 116.
40. A similar shot with rain in the background is used in Dodsworth, when Fran tells Sam that she has decided to stay in Europe.
41. Directed by William Wyler.
42. Quoted in Stine, Mother Goddam, 159.
43. Ibid.
44. Rollyson, Lillian Hellman, 180.
45. Ibid.
46. Wright, Lillian Hellman, 161. Pendleton had played Leo in Mike Nichols's 1967 revival at Lincoln Center, which starred Anne Bancroft as Regina. Nichols, like Wyler, preferred a softer view of the Hubbards; he presented them as decent people who are transformed into monsters by events.
10. War Films
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “FDR and the Four Freedoms Speech,” January 6, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (accessed January 30, 2012), http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/fourfreedoms.
2. Draft letter from Wyler to Y. Frank Freeman, February 24, 1954, Wyler Collection.
3. Directed by William Wyler.
4. This charge was revived seven years later, and the studios were ordered to divorce production from exhibition and distribution.
5. Bernard F. Dick, The Star Spangled Screen (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 89.
6. Ibid., 90.
7. Berg, Goldwyn, 368.
8. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 224.
9. According to Koppes and Black (Hollywood Goes to War, 225), RKO and MGM wanted to re-release Gunga Din and Kim to increase sympathy for the British. The OWI appealed to the studios to drop their plans, citing the dangers those pictures posed for Allied unity.
10. Wyler to Hedda Hopper, August 2, 1942, Wyler Collection.
11. Michael Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 130.
12. Script dated October 18, 1941, with pink page revisions dated as late as November 7, 1941, Wyler Collection.
13. Directed by William Wyler.
14. For the same reason, he would cut the more overtly preachy scenes from The Best Years of Our Lives four years later.
15. Script, October 18, 1941, Wyler Collection.
16. Bosley Crowther, The Lion's Share (New York: Dutton, 1957).
17. Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver, 126.
18. Ibid., 129.
19. Unidentified clipping, August 2, 1942, Wyler Collection.
20. The first air-raid episode in the film is experienced from the Beldons’ point of view. They are forced into their basement along with their servants, and Mrs. Beldon objects to being ordered about by an air-raid warden. But when she hears the planes coming, Wyler isolates her in the frame, dwarfing her beside a large fireplace, and she seems diminished and alone.
21. Script, October 18, 1941, Wyler Collection.
22. Herman A Talent for Trouble, 235.
23. Ibid.
24. Letter, March 1942, Wyler Collection.
25. Frank Capra, The Name above the Title (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 318.
26. Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman (New York: Bantam, 1970), 103.
27. Ibid., 105.
28. Ibid.
29. The Russia film was eventually made as a full-length feature, The North Star, with a screenplay by Hellman. It was directed by Lewis Milestone and starred Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, and Walter Brennan.
30. Telegram from Frank Capra to Wyler, April 8, 1942, Wyler Collection.
31. Wyler, handwritten note, April 8, 1942, Wyler Collection.
32. Wyler to Capra, April 22, 1942, Wyler Collection.
33. Capra to Wyler, undated, Wyler Collection.
34. May 25, 1942, Wyler Collection.
35. Madsen, William Wyler, 225.
36. Wyler's physical, May 25, 1942, Wyler Collection.
37. Wyler's first choice for a writer was irwin Shaw, who was not eligible for a commission due to his age (twenty-eight) and his draft status (1-A). Memo, July 31, 1942, Wyler Collection.
38. Army orders, August 22, 1942, Wyler Collection.
39. Wyler to Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force, April 21, 1943, Wyler Collection.
40. Ibid.
41. Quoted in Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 249.
42. Lieutenant Jerome Chodorov, October 6, 1942, Wyler Collection.
43. “Wyler Escapes injury,” New York Times, February 4, 1943.
44. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 252.
45. Los Angeles Herald Express, February 15, 1943.
46. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 252.
47. Wyler to Mrs. H. J. Tannenbaum, May 5, 1943, Wyler Collection.
48. Wyler, “Flying over Germany,” 25.
49. Ibid.
50. Wyler to Robert Lovett, June 28, 1943, Wyler Collection.
51. August 26, 1943, Wyler Collection.
52. Telegram from Wyler to Beirne Lay, July 27, 1943, Wyler Collection.
53. Ibid.
54. Wyler to Tex McCrary, November 6, 1943, Wyler Collection.
55. Ibid.
56. Uncredited, undated script, “Eighth Air Force,” August 6, 1943, Wyler Papers.
57. Uncredited, undated script, Wyler Papers.
58. Lester Koenig, Memphis Belle script, December 10, 1943, Wyler Collection.
59. Ibid.
60. Wyler, “Details of Service M/Sgt Lester H. Koenig,” Wyler Collection.
61. He would return to these bucolic images again and again in his postwar work—for instance, in the shots of Boone City at the beginning of The Best Years of Our Lives and particularly in the vast expanses of land, space, and beauty in Friendly Persuasion and The Big Country. There is even a fleeting feel for the countryside in his dark and bitter final films, The Collector and The Liberation of L. B. Jones.
62. Karel Reisz, “The Later Films of William Wyler,” Sequence 13 (1951): 25.
63. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 265.
64. Review by Bosley Crowther, New York Times, April 14, 1944.
65. Zanuck to Wyler, April 2 1944, Wyler Collection.
66. Wyler to Moss Hart, February 20, 1944, Wyler Collection.
67. Wyler to Zanuck, February 22, 1944, Wyler Collection.
68. Memo from Edward Munson Jr., May 18, 1944, Wyler Collection.
69. Memo from Wyler, June 19, 1944, Wyler Collection.
70. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 271.
71. Wyler to Tex, October 12, 1944, Wyler Collection.
72. Madsen, William Wyler, 256.
73. Lester Koenig, treatment, June 27, 1944, Wyler Collection.
74. Ibid.
75. Lester Koenig, revised treatment, June 17, 1944, Wyler Collection.
76. Wyler to Francis Harmon, November 27, 1945, Wyler Collection.
77. Wyler to Harmon, December 4, 1945, Wyler Collection.
78. Ibid.
11. The Way Home
1. Hermine Rich isaacs, “William Wyler
: Director with a Passion and a Craft,” Theatre Arts 31 no. 2 (February 1947).
2. Marx, Goldwyn, 307.
3. “The Way Home,” Time, August 7, 1944.
4. Marx, Goldwyn, 308.
5. Isaacs, “William Wyler,” 22.
6. Pat Duggan to Goldwyn, June 15, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
7. Robert Sherwood to Goldwyn, August 27, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
8. Telegram from Goldwyn to Sherwood, September 4, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
9. Interoffice memo, November 16, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
10. Berg, Goldwyn, 410.
11. New York Times, November 17, 1946.
12. Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” 6.
13. Ibid.
14. Charles Affron and Jona Mirella Affron, Best Years: Going to the Movies, 1945–1946 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 226.
15. Isaacs, “William Wyler,” 22–23.
16. James Agee, “What Hollywood Can Do,” Nation, December 7, 1946, 14.
17. In earlier versions of the script (Goldwyn Papers), the men discuss their families in more detail and even share some pictures. Fred sees Peggy for the first time—in a picture—and is immediately taken with her. Fred also talks about Gadorsky, the pilot he has nightmares about but never discusses in detail in the final film. Homer mentions a book he is reading, Victory over Fear, and remarks that “every one of us has got to fight out that battle inside himself.” Al later tells Fred, “A kid like Homer is lucky in a way…. He's got his scars where you can see them…. Maybe it's easier to have them where you can see them, than have them hidden inside.” Perhaps Wyler's three-shot framing was influenced by that line, which was eventually cut from the script.
18. Miller, William Wyler: Interviews, 136.
19. In Sherwood's earliest drafts, Fred goes right to the drugstore to see Mr. Bullard, who tells him that Marie no longer lives at home. He then calls his parents to get her address.
20. Early script, November 17, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
21. Arthur Miller, All My Sons (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1947), 31–32.
22. Robert Sherwood, script entitled “Glory for Me,” December 10, 1945, Goldwyn Papers; additional revised page dated February 20, 1946.
23. Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” 6–7.
24. In an earlier version of the script (November 17, 1945, Goldwyn Papers), Peggy's boyfriend (named Payne) is puzzled that she would date a soda jerk. (in earlier versions, it should be remembered, Fred asks Marie for a divorce early in the film.) He says, “What happened to this country while I've been away? Has it turned into a democracy or something?”
25. Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” 8.
26. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, 41.
27. Early script, November 17, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
28. Later draft of script, December 10, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
29. In a departure from the novel and from earlier versions of the script, Marie asks Fred for a divorce, claiming that she is sick of having no money and is tired of waiting for him to find a job.
30. Later draft of script, December 10, 1945, Goldwyn Papers.
31. Telegram from Wyler to Sherwood, June 6, 1946, Wyler Collection.
32. Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” 9.
33. Ibid., 10.
34. Ibid.
35. Slocombe, “The Work of Gregg Toland,” 75.
36. Ibid.
37. André Bazin, William Wyler ou le janséniste de la mise en scene, Revue du Cinema (1948), reprinted in Qu'est-ceque le cinema (1958). Hugh Gray did not translate this essay or include it in the American edition of Bazin's What Is Cinema? it was later translated by Bert Cardullo and included in Bazin at Work.
38. Anderegg, William Wyler, 142.
39. Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” 10.
40. Madsen, William Wyler, 274.
41. “MacKinlay Kantor's Charges Baffle Him,” undated clipping, Goldwyn Papers.
42. Wyler to lawyer, June 6, 1948, Wyler Collection.
12. The American Scene I
1. Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 507.
2. Madsen, William Wyler, 280.
3. McBride, Frank Capra, 507.
4. Film Daily, November, 13 1946.
5. “The Story of Liberty Films,” Wyler Collection.
6. Quoted in McBride, Frank Capra, 530.
7. Madsen, William Wyler, 288.
8. Wyler memo, August 10, 1948, Wyler Collection.
9. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 307.
10. In the casting notes for the play, then titled “Washington Square,” a second page of possible actors to play Morris includes Montgomery Clift and Henry Fonda; Gene Barry and John Forsythe also appear on the list. The list for Catherine includes Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine; Wyler's first wife, Margaret Sullavan; and Jane Wyatt, Jessica Tandy, and Mercedes McCambridge. The candidates for Dr. Sloper include Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwick, and Wyler favorite Walter Huston, along with Vincent Price, Louis Calhearn, and Ronald Colman.
11. Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift (New York: Bantam, 1979), 142.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 142, 143.
14. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 310.
15. Hanson, “William Wyler,” 28.
16. In a letter, the Goetzes describe the origins of their play:
Well, our latest play, “One Man Show,” closed after five weeks…. We thought it was a very good play…. One of us said to the other: “Well, we're better off than Henry James.” Mr. James had the experience to stop all experiences. He came out on the stage the opening night of “Guy Donville” to calls of “Author, Author,” and then was hooted. Thinking about James, one day we picked up an early novel of his, “Washington Square.”…As dramatists we saw in it a number of things: First, it was about the father-daughter relationship of which we still had much to say; second, it was told in terms of characters who did what people always do, the worst things for the best reasons; third, there was the real challenge of turning poor, dull “Catherine Sloper” into a true heroine. We could not forget that girl. She kept at us.
Ruth and Augustus Goetz to John Chapman, March 17, 1948, Ruth and Augustus Goetz Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
17. Lee Sabinson pointed out this stark portrait of a world comprising unattractive characters in his evaluation of the play, which he read in manuscript and declined to produce: “I found Washington Square an extremely well-written and interesting character study but unfortunately nowhere in the play did I find a single character I was interested enough to root for one hundred per cent. Catherine…I found completely unattractive…. Dr. Sloper is psychotic on the subject of his daughter…and the final denouement of her inner struggle comes too late in the play for me to care about her.” Letter from the Goetzes’ agent to Leah Salisbury, July 23, 1946, Goetz Papers.
18. That early script also indicates that the Goetzes wanted to experiment with a narrator whose voice would introduce the characters, but they wisely dispensed with that approach.
19. John Hobart, “Director William Wyler and The Heiress,” unidentified newspaper clipping, Wyler Papers.
20. Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, The Heiress (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1975), 41, 52.
21. The dialogue for this confrontation was created for the film. In the play, Catherine avoids an encounter with her father by excusing herself, telling him, “I have some letters to write.”
22. New York Times, October 7, 1949.
23. Variety, May 26, 1950, Wyler Collection.
24. Ronald Davis, “Southern Methodist University Oral History Project: William Wyler (1979),” reprinted in Miller, William Wyler: Interviews, 101.
13. The American Scene II
1. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 55.
2. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 318.
3. Terry Coleman, Olivier (New York: Henry Holt, 2005),
220.
4. David O. Selznick to Wyler, June 14, 1950, Wyler Papers.
5. Coleman, Olivier, 223.
6. Ibid., 222.
7. Elia Kazan, A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), 144.
8. Coleman, Olivier, 222–23.
9. Stephen C. Brennan, “Sister Carrie Becomes Carrie,” in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen, ed. R. Barton Palmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 187.
10. Variety, October 12, 1949.
11. San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 1949.
12. Madsen, William Wyler, 299.
13. Wyler to Goetzes, June 7, 1949, Wyler Collection.
14. In light of the Breen office's objections to the material, it is interesting that RKO commissioned a “story test report” on Sister Carrie—which was to star Ingrid Bergman—from Audience Research inc. That agency concluded that the story “has below average appeal for moviegoers both as to subject matter and as a vehicle for Ingrid Bergman.” Audience Research inc., “Story Test Report,” July 21, 1944, Wyler Papers.
15. Goetzes’ treatment, May 27, 1949, Goetz Papers.
16. Goetzes to Wyler, May 31, 1949, Goetz Papers.
17. Wyler to Goetzes, June 7, 1949, Goetz Papers.
18. ibid.
19. Even in one of the later versions of the script, the Goetzes are still portraying Hurstwood as an aggressive man with a quick temper. For example, when Carrie visits him at the restaurant and Slawson catches the couple in an embrace and orders them to “carry that on in the back room,” Hurstwood retorts, “Keep your filthy mouth to yourself. You fathead!” He then throws down his coat and walks out. He never exhibits this kind of bravado in the released film.
20. Archer Winston, New York Post, February 11, 1952.
21. Brandon French, On the Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1978).
22. This is not an unusual view for a Wyler film. A similar pessimism informs Counsellor-at-Law, Dodsworth, The Little Foxes, The Heiress, and, to some extent, The Best Years of Our Lives, although in all but The Heiress, the negativity is balanced by a promise that happiness is possible with the right partner. Dodsworth seems headed for a happier future with Edith Cortwright, Regina's blighted marriage is contrasted by her daughter's love for David Hewitt, and the failure of Fred Derry's marriage is offset by his love for Peggy and the marriage of Homer and Wilma. No such balance is offered here.
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