William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Most Celebrated Director

Notes

427 Notes Introduction 1. roger Leenhardt, “À bas Ford / vive Wyler!” L’Ecran francais 146 (april 13, 1948). Merve Fejzula, my research assistant, translated this article. 2. andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (New York: e. P. Dutton, 1968), 167. 3. Show, March 1970, 15. 4. Gabriel Miller, William Wyler: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 129. 5. William Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” Screenwriter 2, no. 9 (February 1947): 10. 6. Curtis Lee Hanson, “William Wyler,” Cinema 3, no. 5 (Summer 1967): 24. 7. David bordwell, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 346. 8. William Wyler, “escape to reality,” Liberty 24, no. 1 (January 4, 1947), 16, reprinted in Picturegoer, March 15, 1947, 8. 9. Directed by William Wyler (Tatge Productions, 1986; New York: Kino Video, 2002), DVD. 10. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System (New York: Pantheon books, 1988), 5–8, 225. 11. Hanson, “William Wyler,” 24. 12. Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 290. 13. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, 2004), 975. 14. Wyler, “escape to reality,” 16. 15. New York Times, June 18, 1950. 16. Sarris, American Cinema, 167. 17. Schatz, Genius of the System, 5. 18. Miller, William Wyler: Interviews, 119. 19. a. Scott berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (New York: ballantine, 1990), 271. 20. ibid., 273. 428 Notes to Pages 15–36 21. Quoted in ibid., 272. 22. ibid., 309. 23. Wyler to Y. Frank Freeman, February 24, 1954, William Wyler Collection , Margaret Herrick Library, academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Los angeles, California. 24. Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 13. 25. William Wyler, “Flying over Germany,” News Digest 2, no. 13 (august 15, 1943): 26. 26. andré bazin, Bazin at Work: Major Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties, ed. and trans. bert Cardullo and alain Piette (New York: routledge, 1997), 5. 27. Charles Higham, “William Wyler,” Action 8, no. 5 (September– October 1973): 20. 28. Sidney Kingsley, Five Prize Winning Plays (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1995), 244. 29. On December 21, 2011, the New York Times reported that nearly sixty years after the film’s release, the Writers’ Guild of america West had restored Dalton Trumbo’s writing credit for Roman Holiday. 30. Hanson, “William Wyler,” 34. 31. Directed by William Wyler. 32. Joseph i. anderson and Donald ritchie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 382. 33. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 436. 34. Quoted in Louis Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema (englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 206. 1. Discovering a Vocation and a Style 1. “William Wyler,” Film Reference, last modified 2012, http://filmreference .com/Directors-Ve-Y/Wyler-William.html. 2. Dave’s boss, for instance, tells him that the people of boonton have money but don’t know how to spend it. 3. internal reports, November 16, 1928, Wyler Collection. 4. Wyler would revisit a scene like this in Funny Girl almost forty years later. 5. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 88. 6. axel Madsen, William Wyler: The Authorized Biography (New York: Crowell, 1973), 68. 7. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 91. 8. ibid. 9. Wyler rarely resorted to such imagery, but he would do so again in Dodsworth (1936), when arnold iselin sets fire to a letter that Fran Dods- 429 Notes to Pages 39–56 worth received from her husband. iselin wants Fran to leave her husband and forget the past. Wyler’s camera follows the burning letter as it wafts across the balcony. 10. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 92. 11. Carl Laemmle Jr. to Wyler, august 29, 1931, Wyler Collection. 12. Laemmle Jr. to Wyler, September 3, 1931, Wyler Collection. 2. Coming into His Own 1. Quoted in Madsen, William Wyler, 81. 2. John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Knopf, 1980), 59. 3. Wyler to Oliver La Farge, December 16, 1932, William Wyler Papers , 1925–1975, arts Library Special Collections, Young research Library , UCLa. 4. Huston, An Open Book, 60. 5. Wyler to La Farge, January 30, 1933, Wyler Collection. 6. Huston, An Open Book, 60. 7. ibid. There is a copy of Huston’s script in the Wyler Collection. 8. Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 108. 9. Wyler to Carl Laemmle, December 29, 1932, Wyler Collection. 10...