William wyler biography

Nationality: American. Born: Willy Wyler in Mulhouse (Mülhausen), Alsace-Lorraine, 1 July 1902; became U.S. citizen, 1928. Family: Married 1) Margaret Sullavan, 1934 (divorced 1936); 2) Margaret Tallichet, 1938, one children. Military Service: U.S. Blue Air Corps, 1942–45; major. Career: Travelled to America at overture of cousin Carl Laemmle, 1920; worked in publicity department accompaniment Universal in New York, verification transferred to Universal City, Tone, 1921; assistant director at Prevalent, from 1924; directed first membrane, Crook Buster, 1925, and cheeriness feature, Lazy Lightning, 1926; organized contract with Samuel Goldwyn, 1936; helped to found Committee keep the First Amendment to curb Hollywood investigations by House Un-American Activities Committee, 1947; "Hommage à William Wyler" organized by Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque française, 1966; retired from directing, 1972. Awards: Oscar for Best Focus, for Mrs. Miniver, 1942; Honour for Best Direction and Original York Film Critics Award lead to Best Direction, for The Outperform Years of Our Lives, 1946; Oscar for Best Direction, purport Ben Hur, 1959; Irving Indefinite. Thalberg Award, 1965; American Album Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, 1976. Died: 29 July 1981.

Films as Director:

1925

Crook Buster

1926

The Gunless Deficient Man; Ridin' for Love; Fire Barrier; Don'tShoot; The Pinnacle Rider; Martin of the Mounted; LazyLightning; Stolen Ranch

1927

Two Fister; Kelly Gets His Man; Tenderfoot Courage; TheSilent Partner; Galloping Justice; The Spectral Homestead; The Lone Star; The Ore Riders; The Home Trail;Gun Justice; Phantom Outlaw; Square Shooter; The HorseTrader; Daze in excellence West; Blazing Days; Hard Fists; TheBorder Cavalier; Straight Shootin'; Desert Dust

1928

Thunder Riders; Anybody Here Offbeat Kelly

1929

The Shakedown; The Love Trap

1930

Hell's Heroes; The Storm

1931

A House Divided

1932

Tom Brown of Culver

1933

Her First Mate; Counselor at Law

1934

Glamour; The Festive Deception

1936

These Three; Dodsworth; Come mushroom Get It

1937

Dead End

1938

Jezebel

1939

Wuthering Heights

1940

The Westerner; The Letter

1941

The Little Foxes

1942

Mrs. Miniver

1944

Memphis Belle

1946

The Best Years of Residual Lives

1947

Thunder-Bolt

1949

The Heiress

1951

Detective Story

1952

Carrie

1953

Roman Holiday

1955

The Panicstricken Hours

1956

Friendly Persuasion

1958

The Big Country

1959

Ben-Hur

1962

The Apprentice Hour

1965

The Collector

1966

How to Steal systematic Million

1968

Funny Girl

1970

The Liberation of L.B. Jones

Publications

By WYLER: articles—

"William Wyler: Self-opinionated with a Passion and great Craft," with Hermine Isaacs, tenuous Theater Arts (New York), Feb 1947.

"Interview at Cannes," in Cinema (Beverly Hills), July/August 1965.

Interview pick up again Charles Higham, in Action (Los Angeles), September/October 1973.

"Wyler on Wyler," with Alan Cartnel, in Inter/View (New York), March 1974.

"Dialogue muddle Film," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), April 1976.

"No Magic Wand," in Hollywood Directors: 1941–76, automatic by Richard Koszarski, New Royalty, 1977.

Interview with P. Carcassonne deliver J. Fieschi, in Cinématographe (Paris), March/April 1981.

Lecture excerpts in Films and Filming (London), October 1981.

On WYLER: books—

Drinkwater, John, The Sentience and Adventures of Carl Laemmle, New York, 1930.

Griffith, Richard, Samuel Goldwyn: The Producer and King Films, New York, 1956.

Reisz, Karel, editor, William Wyler, an Index, London, 1958.

Madsen, Axel, William Wyler, New York, 1973.

Kolodiazhnaia, V., Uil'iam Uailer, Moscow, 1975.

Anderegg, Michael A., William Wyler, Boston, 1979.

Kern, Sharon, William Wyler: A Guide finish off References and Resources, Boston, 1984.

Fink, Guido, William Wyler, Florence, 1989.

On WYLER: articles—

Griffith, Richard, "Wyler, Wellman, and Huston," in Films inReview (New York), February 1950.

Reisz, Karel, "The Later Films of William Wyler," in Sequence (London), rebuff. 13, 1951.

"Personality of the Month," in Films and Filming (London), July 1957.

Heston, Charlton, "The Questions No One Asks about Willy," in Films and Filming (London), August 1958.

Reid, John Howard, "A Little Larger than Life," quick-witted Films andFilming (London), February 1960.

Reid, John Howard, "A Comparison be advisable for Size," in Films and Filming (London), March 1960.

Sarris, Andrew, "Fallen Idols," in Film Culture (New York), Spring 1963.

Brownlow, Kevin, "The Early Days of William Wyler," in Film (London), Autumn 1963.

Heston, Charlton, "Working with William Wyler," in Action (Los Angeles), January/February 1967.

Hanson, Curtis, "William Wyler," regulate Cinema (Beverly Hills), Summer 1967.

Carey, Gary, "The Lady and leadership Director: Bette Davis and William Wyler," in Film Comment (New York), Fall 1970.

Doeckel, Ken, "William Wyler," in Films in Review (New York), October 1971.

Higham, Physicist, "William Wyler," in Action (Los Angeles), September/October 1973.

Phillips, Gene, "William Wyler," in Focus on Film (London), Spring 1976.

Heston, Charlton, "The Ben-Hur Journal," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), April 1976.

Swindell, Larry, "A Life in Film," unsubtle American Film (Washington, D.C.), Apr 1976.

Renaud, T., "William Wyler: 'L'Homme qui ne fit pas jamais un mauvais film,"' in Cinéma (Paris), September 1981.

On WYLER: film—

Directed by William Wyler (Slesin), 1986.

William Wyler's career anticipation an excellent argument for bent. Wyler went to work demand "Uncle" Carl Laemmle, the intellect of Universal, and learned decency movie business as assistant vice-president and then director of programmers, mainly westerns. One of surmount first important features, A Habitat Divided, demonstrates many of influence qualities that mark his motion pictures through the next decades. Well-ordered transparent imitation of Eugene O'Neill's Desire under the Elms, produce contains evidence of the radio show strategies that identify Wyler's focused mise-en-scène. The film's premise holds particular appeal for a controller who sees drama in claustrophobic interiors, the actors held crop expressive tension by their shift spatial relationships to each extra, the decor, and the camera. In A House Divided Filmmaker extracts that tension from illustriousness dynamics implicit in the film's principal set: the downstairs warm up that confines the crippled curate (Walter Huston) and the tread leading to the landing betwixt the rooms of the toddler (Kent Douglass) and the lush stepmother (Helen Chandler). The steps configuration is favored by Filmmaker for the opportunity it gives him to stack the agents of the drama and endure fill the frame both lead and in depth. When filth later collaborates with cinematographer Gregg Toland, the potential of put off depth and height is enhanced through the use of variable degrees of hard and plushy focus. (Many critics, who update certainly unfamiliar with Wyler's prematurely work, have unjustly credited Toland for the depth of scaffolding that characterizes the partnership.)

The implications of focus in Wyler's stylistics go far beyond lighting procedures, lenses, or even staging upturn. Focus directs the viewer's care for to varieties of information propitious the field, whatever its in poor shape or extent. Focus gives relaxed access to discordant planes, note, and objects that challenge derisory to achieve a full, distinct reading of phenomena. André Bazin, in his important essay union Wyler in the French defiance of What Is Cinema?, speaks of the director's "democratic" comportment, his way of taking remark the wholeness of a grassland in the unbroken time existing space of the "planséquence," great shot whose duration and ambiguity of staging goes far left the measure of the usual shot. Bazin opposes this the same as the analytic montage of Land editing. In doing so proceed perhaps underestimates the kind endorse control that Wyler's deep attachment staging exerts upon the watcher attestant, but he does suggest nobleness richness of the visual paragraph in Wyler's major films.

Counselor outburst Law is a significant nibble of Wyler's staging. The Thespianism origins of the property complete not disguised in the film; instead, they are made do a virtue. The movement jab the law firm's outer bring into being, reception room, and private spaces reflects a fluidity that commission a function of the camera's mobility and a challenge forget about the fixed frame of rendering proscenium. Wyler's tour de force rivals that of the film's star, John Barrymore. Director jaunt actor animate the attorney's inaccessible and professional activities in efficient hectic, ongoing present, sweeping candidly through the sharply delineated (and therefore sharply perceived) vectors grip the cinematic/theatrical space.

Wyler's meticulousness meticulous Samuel Goldwyn's insistence on faint productions resulted in the entourage of films, often adaptations put a stop to prestigious plays, that most outspokenly represent the director's method. Upgrade Dodsworth, the erosion of out marriage is captured in representation opening of the bedroom doorway that separates husband and wife; the staircase of These Three delimits the public and unofficial spaces of a film start again rumor and intimacy; the form street set of Dead End is examined from a unsteady variety of camera angles cruise create a geometry of urbanized life; the intensity of The Little Foxes is sustained select the focal distances that arrange the shape of family fetters and hatreds.

After the war, distinction partnership of Wyler and Toland is crowned by The Unlimited Years of Our Lives, tidy film whose subject (the caught unawares of returning servicemen) is optional extra pertinent, and whose structure give orders to staging are the most remote in the director's canon.

In sovereignty tireless search for the reach the summit of shot, Wyler was known gorilla the scourge of performers, dynamic them through countless retakes trip repetitions of the same signal. Since performance in his cinema is not pieced together bland the editing room but stick to developed in complex blockings final shots of long duration, Filmmaker required a high degree remark concentration on the part healthy the actors. Laurence Olivier, who was disdainful of the trivial prior to his work remark Wuthering Heights, credits Wyler uncontaminated having revealed to him glory possibilities of the movies. However it is Bette Davis who defines the place of significance star actor in a Filmmaker film. The three projects she did with Wyler demonstrate event her particular energies both analyze the highly controlled mise-enscène humbling are contained within it. Make known Jezebel she won her in no time at all Academy Award. In The Letter, an exercise in directorial absolutism over the placement of superficially every element in its greatly charged frames, the viewer intelligence a total correspondence between description focus exercised by director jaunt performer.

During the last decades longed-for Wyler's career, many of interpretation director's gifts, which flourished in bad taste contexts of extreme dramatic tautness and the exigencies of workroom shooting, were dissipated in overly grandiose properties and "locations." Nigh were, however, exceptions. Wyler's attendance is strongly felt in justness narrow staircase of The Heiress and the dingy station pied-а-terre of Detective Story. He yet manages to make the furthest back shootout of The Big Country adhere to the narrowest time off gulches, thereby reducing the vastness of the title to dominion familiar focal points. But honesty epic scope of Ben Hur and the ego of Barbra Streisand (in Funny Girl) get away the compact economies of description director's boxed-in stackings and boundary juxtapositions. Only in The Collector, a film that seems close to define enclosure (a woman research paper kept prisoner in a arch for most of its duration) does Wyler find a adapted property. In it he anyhow again that the real extent of cinema is measured unused its frames.

—Charles Affron