Warner, Jack
Warner Brothers
Warrick, Ruth
Warshow, Robert
Washington Square (James)
Watch on the Rhine (Hellman)
Webb, James
Welles, Orson; Citizen Kane
West, Claudine
West, Jessamyn; The Friendly Persuasion
West, Mae: The Drag
Westerner, The (film; WW); action scenes; Bean challenged by Jane-Ellen; Bean's character; Bean's death; Bean's historical status vs. his portrayal; Bean's love for Lillie Langtry; Bean vs. the cattlemen; budget; casting; cattle herd in; Cole and Bean's friendship; Cole's character; Cole's love for Jane-Ellen; Cole's trial; comedy in; “Cooper Story” script revisions; ending; as historical romance; homesteader vs. cattleman plot; industrialization's role in; Jane-Ellen's character; Lake's Vinegarroon adapted for; music; nature and transformation of wilderness in; new vs. old order in; opening shots; opening title sequence; Oscars for; outdoor scenes; postproduction work; premiere; production schedule; publicity; release date; and rights to the Roy Bean story; “Saddle Tramp” script revisions; sepia printing for; shooting location; shooting schedule/difficulties; steer-killing farmer is hanged; themes; Toland's camera work on; WW's direction of
westerns
We the People (Rice)
Wilcoxon, Henry
“Wild Boys of the Road, The” (Ahearn)
Wilder, Billy; Ace in the Hole; Love in the Afternoon
Wilder, Robert
Wilder, Thornton
Willkie, Wendell
Wilson, Michael
Wimperis, Arthur
windows as metaphors for entrapment
Winged Victory (Hart)
Wise, Robert: The Sound of Music
Wiseman, Joseph
Wolfe, Thomas: Look Homeward, Angel
Wood, Robin
Wordsworth, William: “A Night Piece”
Works Progress Administration
World War II: atomic bombs dropped on Japan; economic/political issues following; films about (see also Memphis Belle; Mrs. Miniver; Thunderbolt); Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; rise of totalitarian governments in; traumatized veterans of
World Wide Productions
Wright, Teresa
Wright, William
Writers’ Guild of America
Wuthering Heights (film; WW): casting; Cathy and Heathcliff's love; Cathy marries Edgar; Cathy's character; composition/framing; critical reception of; endings; experimentalism of; expressionism of; flashback scenes; Heathcliff returns from America; Heathcliff's death; house as setting for; Mr. Earnshaw's death; novel adapted for; opening shot; Oscar nominations for; Pennistone Crag scenes; society vs. nature in; society vs. the individual in; stylistic/thematic importance of; symbolic artistry of; Toland's camera work on
Wuthering Heights (novel; Brontë)
Wyler, Melanie (WW's mother)
Wyler, Robert (WW's brother) The Big Country, involvement in; death of; Detective Story, involvement in; Friendly Persuasion, involvement in; The Heiress, involvement in; A House Divided, involvement in; Roman Holiday, involvement in; The Shakedown, involvement in
Wyler, William: Academy Awards and; affair with Bette Davis; anticommunism of; in the Army Air Force; arrival in America/background of; autocratic behavior of; Bazin on; bombing missions by; career, overview of; CFA role of; on composition; death/funeral of; vs. DeMille; on the director's function; vs. John Ford; at Goldwyn Productions; Goldwyn's relationship with (see under Goldwyn, Samuel); hearing loss by; HUAC investigation of; HUAC's impact on; illness of; investigation of communist affiliations of; Israel supported by; Leenhardt on; liberalism of; Liberty Films cofounded by (see also Liberty Films); marriage to Sullavan; marriage to Talli; military commission for; on morality; on Nazism; as non-pacifist; optimism of; Peck's friendship with; perfectionism of; politics/activism of; preliminary work on The Sound of Music; Production Code challenged by; on propaganda films; religious views of; reputation of; retirement of; Sarris on; at Universal; on the war; World War II involvement of; World War I's impact on
—AWARDS: American Film institute's Life Achievement Award; Directors’ Guild Award; Golden Palme; Griffith Award; New York Film Critics Awards; Oscars; Thalberg Award; Victoire Award
—FILMS: authority/style of; breadth of; The Children's Hour; Crook Buster; deep-focus technique in; diversity of; early style of; Ferry Command; The First Americans; The Gay Deception; The Good Fairy; Her First Mate; A House Divided; houses used in; How Green Was My Valley (collaboration); How to Steal a Million; Lazy Lightning; melodrama in; Memphis Belle; The Negro Soldier; Nine Lives; overview of; pessimism in; Phyllis Was a Fortress; postwar; R.A.F.-A.A.F.; realism of; retakes in; retrospective of; script revisions by WW; The Shakedown; social/political vision in; staircases used in; Thunderbolt; Tom Brown of Culver; triangular shots in; war documentaries (see also Memphis Belle); window-framed shots used in. See also specific films
—WRITINGS: “Escape to Reality”; “Flying over Germany”; “Forgotten Boy”; Laughing Boy; “No Magic Wand”; “Steel”
Yordan, Philip
Yoshimura, Kamisaburo
Young, William W.: Ben-Hur
Yvain, Maurice
Zanuck, Darryl F.; The Longest Day produced by; military commission for
Zerbe, Anthony
Ziegfeld Follies
Zimbalist, Sam
Zinnemann, Fred; High Noon; The Search
Zukor, Adolph
SCREEN CLASSICS
Screen Classics is a series of critical biographies, film histories, and analytical studies focusing on neglected filmmakers and important screen artists and subjects, from the era of silent cinema to the golden age of Hollywood to the international generation of today. Books in the Screen Classics series are intended for scholars and general readers alike. The contributing authors are established figures in their respective fields. This series also serves the purpose of advancing scholarship on film personalities and themes with ties to Kentucky.
SERIES EDITOR
Patrick McGilligan
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips
Michael G. Ankerich
Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film
Ruth Barton
Von Sternberg
John Baxter
The Marxist and the Movies: A Biography of Paul Jarrico
Larry Ceplair
Warren Oates: A Wild Life
Susan Compo
Jack Nicholson: The Early Years
Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer
Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel
Nick Dawson
John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars
Eve Golden
Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen
David Luhrssen
My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey through Hollywood
Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane
William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Director
Gabriel Miller
Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director
Marilyn Ann Moss
Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder
Gene D. Phillips
Arthur Penn: American Director
Nat Segaloff
Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice
David J. Skal with Jessica Rains
Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley
Jeffrey Spivak
Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer
Brian Taves
Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ordet: My Summer with the Danish Filmmaker
Jan Wahl
A reptilian fisherman (Walter Huston) comes between his mail-order bride (Helen Chandler) and his son (Kent Douglass), who wants to take her from him, in A House Divided (1931).
John Barrymore greets his “Yiddishe mama” (Clara Langsner) in
Counsellor-at-Law (1933).
The young members of a love triangle (Joel McCrea, Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins) gather around the patron who ruins them (Alma Kruger) in These Three (1936).
A similar triangular configuration in Wyler's remake of The Children's Hour (1961) features James Garner, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, and Fay Bainter (back to the camera).
Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) and his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), are American innocents whose marriage breaks apart on a European vacation in Dodsworth (1936).
Wyler maximizes space with his use of depth-of-field shots on the set for Dead End (1937).
A group shot from Dead End puts the characters on different planes, featuring “Baby Face” Martin (Humphrey Bogart) and the Dead End Kids.
Julie Marsden (Bette Davis), escorted by her fiancé, Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), scandalizes southern society in her red dress in Jezebel (1938).
Julie tries on a conventional white dress before rejecting it; Wyler traps her within the mirror's frame.
Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) and Cathy (Merle Oberon) enjoy freedom in their natural habitat in Wuthering Heights (1939).
Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), the sole patron at Lillie Langtry's concert, is surprised by his executioner and friend Cole Hardin (Gary Cooper) in a tightly framed “unwestern” space in The Westerner (1940).
Horace Giddens (Herbert Marshall) thinks he has the upper hand in a confrontation with his wife, Regina (Bette Davis), in one of the many staircase scenes in The Little Foxes (1941).
Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson) ministers to an injured Nazi pilot (Helmut Dantine) in Mrs. Miniver (1942).
The crew of the Memphis Belle, with their fighter plane in the background, were the subject of Wyler's acclaimed 1944 documentary.
Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a decorated fighter pilot, is dwarfed by all the junked planes he surveys in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) courts Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) at a dance in The Heiress (1949).
In one of Wyler's many elegant dinner scenes, Morris tries to convince Catherine's father (Ralph Richardson) that he will make a “suitable son-in-law.”
Fascistic police detective James McLeod (Kirk Douglas) confronts an armed criminal (Joseph Wiseman) in Wyler's HUAC parable, Detective Story (1951).
Carrie (Jennifer Jones) attempts to return money to Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier) in Carrie (1952).
Another Wyler staircase shot built on multiple planes of action: this one features Mary Murphy, Martha Scott, and Humphrey Bogart in the foreground, with Fredric March at the top of the stairs, in The Desperate Hours (1955).
Josh Birdwell (Anthony Perkins) decides to go against his Quaker principles and defy his mother (Dorothy McGuire) by fighting in the Civil War in Friendly Persuasion (1956). His father (Gary Cooper) is pushed to the side of the frame.
Uncredited screenwriter Gore Vidal sought to inject a homoerotic element in the relationship between Messala (Stephen Boyd) and Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) in Ben-Hur.
Wyler's camera emphasizes the grandeur and scope of the chariot race scene from Ben-Hur (1959).
A composition in depth evokes the creepy isolation of a victim (Samantha Eggar) and her victimizer (Terence Stamp) in a cave-like room in The Collector (1965).
A white southern policeman (Anthony Zerbe) beats his African American mistress (Lola Falana) in Wyler's uncompromising study of racism, The Liberation of L. B. Jones (1970).
Wyler dines with leading lady Bette Davis circa 1937, when they were romantically involved during the filming of Jezebel.
A publicity shot of a young William Wyler.
William Wyler Page 59