William Wyler (July 1, 1902
– July 27, 1981) was a leading American
motion picture director
and screenwriter. He was
considered by his peers as second only to
John
Ford as a "master craftsman of cinema." The winner of three
Best Director Academy Awards, again second only to John Ford.
Notable works included
Ben-Hur (1959),
The Best Years of Our Lives
(1946), and
Mrs.
Miniver (1942), all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for
Best Director, and also won Best Picture. Internationally, his
films won another 19 awards and were nominated 34 times. After
directing
Dodsworth in
1936, starring
Walter Huston and
Mary Astor, he earned his first Oscar
nomination, "sparking a 20-year run of almost unbroken
greatness."
Film historian
Ian Freer calls Wyler a
"bona fide perfectionist," who's penchant for retakes and an
attempt to hone every last nuance, "became the stuff of legend." As
a result of his ability to direct a string of classic literary
adaptations into huge box-office and critical successes, he became
one of "Hollywood's most bankable moviemakers" during the 1930s and
1940s.
Other popular films include
Funny
Girl (1968),
How to
Steal a Million (1966),
The
Big Country (1958),
Roman
Holiday (1953),
The
Heiress (1949),
The
Letter (1940),
The
Westerner (1940),
Wuthering Heights (1939),
Jezebel (1938),
Dodsworth (1936),
Barbary Coast (1935),
A House Divided (1931), and
Hell's Heroes
(1930).
Early life
Wyler was
born Wilhelm Weiller to a Jewish family, a Swiss father and a German mother, in
Mulhouse
in the
French
region of Alsace
(then part
of the German
Empire
). His mother was a cousin of
Carl Laemmle, founder of
Universal Pictures. His father, Leopold,
started as a traveling salesman which he later turned into a
thriving haberdashery business.
During his childhood Wyler attended a number of schools and
developed a reputation as "something of a hellraiser," being
expelled more than once for misbehavior. His mother often took him
and his older brother Robert, to concerts, opera, and the theatre,
as well as the early cinema. Sometimes at home his family and their
friends would stage amateur theatricals for personal
enjoyment.
After realizing that William was not interested in the family
business, and having suffered through a terrible year financially
after World War I, his mother, Melanie, contacted her distant
cousin about opportunities for him. Laemmle was in the habit of
coming to Europe each year and finding promising young men who
would work in America.
In 1921, Wyler found himself and a young Czech man, Paul Kohner
(later the independent agent) on the same boat to New York. Their
enjoyment of the first class trip was short lived as they found
they had to pay back the cost of the passage out of their $25
weekly income as messengers to Universal Pictures in New York.
After working in New York for several years Wyler decided he wanted
to go to Hollywood and be a director.
Film career
Around 1923, he arrived in Los Angeles and began work on the
Universal lot on the swing gang, cleaning the stages and moving the
sets. His break came when he was hired as a 2nd assistant editor.
His work ethic was uneven at best with
Irving Thalberg nicknaming him "Worthless
Willy". After some ups and downs (including getting fired) Wyler
became focused on becoming a director. He started as a 3rd
assistant director and by 1925 he became the youngest director on
the Universal lot directing the Westerns that Universal were famed
at turning out. In 1928, he became a
naturalized citizen of the United States.
He soon proved himself an able craftsman and in the early 1930s
became one of Universal's greatest assets, directing such solid
films as
The Love Trap,
Hell's Heroes,
Tom Brown of Culver,
and
The Good Fairy.
He became well-known for his merciless (some would say sadistic)
insistence on multiple retakes, resulting in often award-winning
and critically acclaimed performances from his actors. After
leaving Universal he began a long collaboration with
Samuel Goldwyn for whom he directed such
classics as
Dodsworth (1936),
These Three (1936),
Dead End (1937),
Wuthering Heights (1939),
The Westerner (1940),
The Little Foxes (1941)
and
The Best Years of
Our Lives (1946).
Laurence Olivier, whom Wyler
directed to his first-ever nomination, for
Wuthering Heights, credited Wyler
with teaching him how to act for the screen.
Bette Davis not only received three Oscar
nominations for her screen work under Wyler, but won her second
Oscar for her performance in Wyler's 1938 film
Jezebel.
Charlton Heston won his only nomination and
Best Actor Oscar for his work in Wyler's 1959
Ben-Hur.
Barbra Streisand co-won 1968's Best Actress
Oscar for her screen debut as entertainer
Fanny Brice in
Funny
Girl.
In 1941 Wyler directed one of the key films that galvanized support
for Britain and against the Nazis in an America slow to awaken to
the threat in Europe, it was
Mrs.
Miniver (1942), a story of a middle class English family
adjusting to the war in Europe.
Mrs.
Miniver won Wyler his first Academy Award for Best
Director.
World War II
Between 1942 and 1945, Wyler served as a major in the
United States Army Air Forces
and directed two documentaries
The Memphis
Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944) and
Thunderbolt! (1947), with
Lester Koenig and
John Sturges, the story of a P-47
fighter-bomber squadron in the Mediterranean.
Wyler also directed a film which captured the mood of the nation as
it turned to peace after the war.
The Best Years of Our Lives
(1946), the story of three veterans arriving home and adjusting to
civilian life, dramatized the problems of returning veterans for
those who had remained on the homefront. Wyler's most personal
film, taken from his experiences away from his family for three
years and on the front,
The Best Years of Our Lives
won the
Academy Award
for Best Director (his second) and
Academy Award for Best
Picture.
Postwar career
During the
immediate postwar period, Wyler directed a handful of critically
acclaimed and influential films, The
Heiress which earned Olivia
de Havilland her second Oscar, Roman Holiday (1953), which
introduced Audrey Hepburn to American
audiences and resulted in her first Oscar nomination and only win,
Friendly
Persuasion (1956) which was awarded the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film
Festival
, and Ben-Hur (1959) which won eleven
Oscars (equalled only twice, by Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King in 2003). Ben-Hur won
Wyler his third Academy Award for Best Director.
Wyler's films garnered more awards for participating artists and
actors than any other director in the history of Hollywood. He
received twelve Oscar nominations for Best Director in total, while
dozens of his collaborators and actors won Oscars or were
nominated.In 1965, Wyler won the
Irving
Thalberg Award for career achievement. Eleven years later, he
received the
American Film
Institute Life Achievement Award. In addition to his Best
Picture and Best Director Oscar wins, thirteen of Wyler's films
earned Best Picture nominations.
Wyler's style is (among
auteurist
critics) notoriously difficult to perceive. He did not build a
stable of players like
Capra,
Preston Sturges or
Ford, although he frequently worked with composer
Alfred Newman, and editors Daniel Madell and Robert Swink. He
directed varied types of films without any trademark shots or
themes, but in his choice of lighting, blocking and camera
distance, and in the serious liberal tone of his work, a continuity
of worldview is detectable.
On July 24, 1981, Wyler gave an interview with his daughter,
producer
Catherine Wyler for
Directed by William
Wyler, a
PBS
documentary about his life and career. A mere three days later,
Wyler died from a
heart
attack. Wyler's last words on film concern a vision of
directing his "next picture...
Going Home".
Wyler is interred at
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Cemetery
in Glendale
, California
.
Wyler was briefly married to
Margaret
Sullavan (November 25, 1934 - March 13, 1936) and married
Margaret Tallichet on October 23,
1938. The couple remained together until his death; they had five
children, Catherine, Judith, William Jr., Melanie and David.
Awards
Wyler is the most nominated director in Academy Awards history with
12 nominations. In addition to that, Wyler has the distinction of
having won the Academy Award for Best Direction on three occasions.
The awards were for his direction of:
Ben Hur,
The Best Years of Our
Lives, and
Mrs.
Miniver. He is tied with
Frank
Capra and behind
John Ford, who won
four Oscars in this category. There are twelve other directors who
have won two Academy Awards for Best Director.
William Wyler received the AFI LIfe Achievement Award in
1976.
Filmography
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Anderegg, Michael A. William Wyler. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0-8057-9268-6.
- Herman, Jan. A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's
Most Acclaimed Director. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995.
ISBN 0-399-14012-3.
- Madsen, Axel. William Wyler: the Authorized Biography.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973. ISBN 0-49101-302-7.
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
