LYCOS RETRIEVER 
William Wyler: Films
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Wyler's first picture upon returning from World War II would prove to be the last movie he made for Goldwyn. A returning veteran like those portrayed in "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), this film won Wyler his second Oscar. The movie, which featured a moving performance by real-life veteran and double amputee Harold Russell, struck a universal chord with Americans and was a major box office hit. It was the second Wyler-directed picture to be named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The film ... won Oscars for star Fredric March and co-star Russell (who was also given an honorary award "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans"), film editor Daniel Mandell, composer Hugo Friedhofer and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood, and was instrumental in garnering the Irving Thalberg Award for Samuel Goldwyn, who also took home the Best Picture Oscar that year as "Best Years" producer.
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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.
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Wyler was a supreme craftsman who captured how people look and sound in the most decisive and harrowing moments of their lives, and he framed those moments in ways that make them memorable forever. There are so many worthies that it's tempting to highlight them all, but in addition to the famous ones, like his masterpiece The Best Years of Our Lives, Jezebel, The Letter, Roman Holiday, The Little Foxes, Dead End, and The Heiress (hands down the best Henry James adaptation), don't miss These Three, Wyler's 1936 adaptation of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (which he redid in 1961); Counsellor at Law, featuring John Barrymore's greatest film performance; and Dodsworth, with Walter Huston at his most powerful. Laurence Olivier credited Wyler with teaching him how to act for the screen in Wuthering Heights. Also check out Olivier in Carrie, an adaptation of Dreiser's Sister Carrie that contains one of his finest (and least-known) portrayals. Peak performances are routine in Wyler films. He brought out the best in every actor he ever worked with.
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W[Y]ler began his film career at Universal Studios during the silent era. Before he made his last film in 1970 , Wyler had many fine motion pictures to his credit. In 1936 he left Universal to begin a long-time association with producer Sam Goldwyn and cinematographer Gregg Toland. He made three films with Bette Davis, with whom he often clashed. But many critics credit Wyler with drawing out of her some of her best acting performances.
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In 1936 Wyler signed a contract with producer Samuel Goldwyn. The pair's relationship resulted in a ten-year run of critical and financially successful dramas, including three films scripted by playwright Lillian Hellman: 1936's These Three, 1937's Dead End, and 1941's The Little Foxes; an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel of a disintegrating marriage titled Dodsworth; a 1936 collaboration with Howard Hawk's on the adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel Come and Get It; 1938's Jezebel; 1940's The Westerner and The Letter; and the 1942 film that won him his first Academy Award, Mrs. Miniver. Each of these films is acknowledged as classics of American cinema due to Wyler's deft handling of literary themes in a cinematic context. Mrs. Miniver, in particular, is widely admired for its contribution to the morale of the Allied efforts in World War II through its depiction of an English family struggling to survive the travails of war.
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While many people exalt Welles' cinematic opening in Citizen Kane (1941), the tracking shot that Wyler uses to establish setting and mood at the start of The Letter (1940) deserves attention. The sequence culminates with the shooting of Hammond and that first vision of a woman possessed. It's outstanding, as are the geometrics of light and shadow that characterize this film as something beyond mere melodrama. The Letter starts as a masterpiece, ends as a masterpiece -- something rare in the translation of literature into film.
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