William Wyler (48 page)

Wyler started out the 1960s with the blacklist still on his mind. At a National Press Club luncheon for
Ben-Hur
, he denied there was ever a communist infiltration of Hollywood, condemned blacklisting policies, and asserted his intention to hire writers without regard to their politics. To illustrate the absurdity of the blacklist, he mentioned that Ian McLellan Hunter had been blacklisted as a communist, yet his original story for
Roman Holiday
was a monarchical fairy tale: “Royalists everywhere loved it.”
⁵¹

Wyler made three big-budget color films—
Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country
, and
Ben-Hur
—before remaking
The Children's Hour
(1961), his last black-and-white film and a work that belongs with the HUAC inspired group considered here. He claimed to be unhappy with
These Three
, his first try at Hellman's play and his first film for Goldwyn. Wyler told Curtis Hanson, “I had been dissatisfied with ‘These Three'; it was not the picture I intended…. It was emasculated. On the stage it was a tragedy.”
⁵²
So he decided to remake
The Children's Hour
and remain faithful to Hellman's original text. The result, as he later told Charles Higham, was “a disaster.” This time, he “had adhered too closely to the original play, which had dated badly.”
⁵³

Ironically, as Wyler pointed out, the play's central point was integral to both versions: “I saw the story as a tragedy about the power of a lie—in this case the lie that one of the students spread about two of her teachers. I thought the film a serious study of the evil that a lie can wreak in people's lives.”
⁵⁴
It was for this very reason that Hellman felt she had not damaged her 1936 adaptation by shifting the emphasis from lesbianism to a love triangle. The remake's connection to the Hollywood blacklist gave the newer film a certain resonance, but interestingly, the earlier version was superior, despite the interference of the censors.

In announcing his intention to remake Hellman's play, Wyler sidestepped the issue of lesbianism. He claimed that the story's subject was a moral one and not essentially about lesbianism, which he said did not interest him. (If so, one wonders why he chose to revisit the play.) He went on to say, “We haven't attempted to make a dirty film. We plan to do everything possible to keep [children] away, even to telling them: We don't want your money if you're under sixteen.” Producer Walter Mirisch told the press that he was working to get the Production Code revised. Hellman, of course, had never used the word
lesbian
in her play, and in spite of all the posturing, it was not used in the film either.
⁵⁵

Once Wyler had settled on the idea of remaking
The Children's Hour
, he contacted Hellman about writing the screenplay. He informed her that he had no deal as yet but hoped to start filming in 1961. Hellman was thrilled at the prospect of working for Wyler again, but when she did not hear from him for two or three months, she accepted a teaching position at Harvard. (After her appearance before the HUAC in 1952, Hellman had been forced to sell her farm, and she needed to work.) Wyler, in the meantime, had persuaded Mirisch to buy the rights from Samuel Goldwyn, and Mirisch had taken out a ten-year lease on the property for $350,000. Learning that Hellman was now committed to Harvard, Wyler implored her to write a draft before starting her teaching assignment, but this proved impossible, as she was going to London for a revival of one of her other plays.

Wyler ultimately persuaded Hellman to work on an outline while sailing to London on the
Queen Elizabeth
in October. (Hellman wanted to introduce Wyler to Peter Schaffer—a young playwright who would later write
Equus
and
Amadeus
—whom she recommended as a screenwriter, but his schedule conflicted with Wyler's.) Once Hellman returned to New York, Mirisch drew up a contract, agreeing to pay her $50,000 to write the screenplay. But the producer was not satisfied with the outline she submitted some months later, and he became concerned about Hellman's working only part-time on the script while teaching at Harvard. He insisted that Wyler send the outline to someone else, and the director decided on Ernest Lehman and John Michael Hayes, both of whom had had recent successes with Hitchcock (Lehman with
North by Northwest;
Hayes with
Rear Window, To Catch a Thief
, and
The Man Who Knew Too Much)
. After reading Hellman's outline, Lehman passed, but Hayes accepted and was hired.

Wyler was not pleased with the draft Hayes submitted in April—he had changed the title to “The Infamous” (later pared down to “Infamous”)—and the director sent it to Hellman for suggestions. She found it “mostly workable” but, interestingly, did not consider it very good “because it borrowed too literally and not always too wisely from the original play.” She also felt that everybody in Hayes's version “talks too much.”
⁵⁶
She mailed Wyler some revisions from her home on Martha's Vineyard but declared that an extensive rewrite was necessary, and she could not do that herself unless production was delayed, which was impossible.

Wyler had already cast the principals. Audrey Hepburn had accepted the role of Karen even before Wyler had a screenplay. Shirley MacLaine was cast as Martha, and James Garner would play Joe. The supporting roles went to Fay Bainter (who had won an Oscar for
Jezebel)
as Mrs. Tilford, and Miriam Hopkins (who had played Martha in
These Three)
as Lily Mortar, Martha's aunt. Wyler had a difficult time casting Mary, the student who lies about Martha and Karen. In a rare casting error, he settled for Karen Balkin, who had starred in a regional production of
The Bad Seed
, a dramatization of the popular novel about a murderous child.

The failure of
The Children's Hour
stems from both Wyler's decision to remain too faithful to a thirty-year-old play and Balkin's overacting to such an extreme that her character's accusations lack any credibility. Wyler, inexplicably, only heightens this mischaracterization by filming some of Mary's outbursts in close-ups that are jarring and destroy the narrative flow. In addition, James Garner projects neither depth nor charm as Joe, leaving the audience wondering what Karen sees in him. Even their love scenes seem perfunctory. Nonetheless, the film contains some scenes that are among Wyler's most visually expressive.

The film opens with idyllic, rural images that mirror the feel of some early scenes in
These Three
. We see girls bicycling across a bridge and then playing a game of catch by a lake. The openness and playfulness reflected in these scenes stand in marked contrast to much of the rest of the film, where even the outdoor scenes seem constrained. The camera next tracks through the tree-lined entry to the Wright-Dobie School and goes inside, where a piano concert is being held for the parents. Wyler introduces Karen and Martha on opposite sides of the room in separate frames, as if to accentuate the schism between them even in the midst of a happy occasion.

He then cuts to Martha, Karen, and Aunt Lily, who are in the kitchen washing and drying glasses after the party. In this scene and in many others set in the home/school, Wyler's camera includes the ceiling in the frame, which creates a feeling of confinement. In these rooms, the ceilings seem to bear down on the characters, trapping them even when they are happy and content. Some of the rooms—especially Karen's and the one shared by Mary and Rosalie—and the corridors in the house are at angles. Wyler's camera emphasizes these angles while also employing shadows that seem to lurk everywhere. A constant atmosphere of oppressiveness thus pervades the film, robbing the school, which is also Karen and Martha's home, of any feeling of comfort.

Joe Cardin's introduction matches the oppressive feel. He is framed first by the kitchen door and then by the open space between the kitchen and the classroom behind it. Here, Wyler's use of the frame-within-a-frame structure highlights Martha's antagonistic attitude toward this intruder, who clearly wants in. When he leaves with Karen, they are filmed in a tight shot in a car—a marked divergence from the outdoor stroll and the cake they share in
These Three
. Their conversation is also tense: Joe wants to get married, but Karen wants to put off this commitment until the school is financially stable. In fact, there is hardly a friendly, open, or loving moment in the entire film.

When Joe drives Karen back to the school, Wyler cuts to Martha's sad face framed by her window—an image he will repeat before her suicide. When Karen goes upstairs to announce her wedding plans, Martha is alone, ironing. Wyler again emphasizes the ceiling pushing down on the two women; the beams seem to touch their heads. Then, as she hugs Karen, Martha's face echoes her desolate expression at the window moments earlier.

Wyler's most forceful compositions come at three important moments in the film, offering subtle variations on one another. In the first, after Mary makes her accusations in the backseat of her grandmother's car, Mrs. Tilford decides to stop at the school to confront the women. There she meets Lily Mortar, who is packing to leave after having a fight with her niece. Descending the stairs and dropping her suitcase, Lily notices Mrs. Tilford, who has already entered the house. Lily complains about her niece, and Mrs. Tilford questions her use of the word
unnatural
to describe Martha. As Lily answers, she is seated on a step separated from Mrs. Tilford by the stairway railing and bars, though joined in the frame by Wyler. Their culpability in the crime they are about to commit links them, although they are separated by the degree of their guilt. When Mrs. Tilford leaves to rejoin Mary in the car, Wyler reverts to a tight, enclosed framing. As the sequence ends, Mary looks out the rear window of the car as Wyler tracks away from the school, reversing the camera movement that first introduced the place and the festive concert inside.

Wyler later varies this linking composition when Mrs. Tilford discovers the truth about Mary. Mrs. Tilford is in her living room, her back to the camera. When she hears Mary, she turns toward the camera and calls to the girl, who is near the top of the staircase. At first, they are shown in separate frames. Then, as she calls for Mary to come to her, Mrs. Tilford walks toward the staircase, and they are joined in the same frame but at a distance. Again, the stair railing separates them, and Wyler highlights the verticals and horizontals of the banister to emphasize entrapment. When Mrs. Tilford trips as she is walking toward the stairs, she ends up sitting on the floor, framed by the doorway; Mary is still in the frame, but separated by the stairs, almost approximating the earlier framing of Mrs. Tilford and Lily Mortar. The double framing of the sitting woman and the girl above her on the stairs diminishes Mrs. Tilford. She then rises and walks silently toward the stairs as Mary, facing her grandmother, backs up. Silent and defeated, she moves to the upper level of the house and is not seen again. As is often the case in Wyler's films, a recognition scene has taken place on a staircase—Mrs. Tilford finally recognizes her granddaughter's villainy, just as Alexandra comes to know her mother's in a similar scene in
The Little Foxes
. Mary's backward progress up the stairs here is not quite the same as Catherine Sloper's ascent at the end of
The Heiress
, but the movement's similarity suggests some ambivalence in Wyler's attitude about Catherine's act of vengeance at the end of that film.

From that recognition scene, Wyler dissolves to Martha entering her house in the evening. She walks toward Karen, who is seated to the side and framed by a doorway, just as Mrs. Tilford was in the earlier scene. When Karen informs Martha that Joe has left, Martha stands again, and though she seems to be on a somewhat higher plane than the seated Karen, the space between them is diminished—in part because their house is so bare, dark, and lifeless. When Martha confesses that she truly loves Karen, she is seated, facing front, not looking at her friend. They are on the same physical plane, but the truth will not set anyone free.

After the confession, Martha retires to her room. When Karen goes upstairs, Wyler places Martha in a corner, with an angled wall behind her, and Karen is framed in the doorway. The low-ceilinged room is again oppressive and shadowed. Martha tells Karen that she would prefer to talk tomorrow, and Karen leaves to take a walk. Martha's face is then framed in the window, and additionally by the curtains, as she watches Karen leave; Karen's image is also framed within the window. The framing of Martha's face here recalls a similar shot of Regina at the end of
The Little Foxes
. In the earlier film, Wyler traps Regina in the vortex of her greed while at the same time freeing Alexandra, who goes off with David to escape her mother and her past. Martha, in contrast, looks down on a scene of desolation.

Inexplicably, Wyler and Hayes altered the ending of Hellman's play, wherein Mrs. Tilford goes to the school after learning the truth and offers to make restitution to Karen. This gesture of reconciliation occurs after Martha has confessed her love to Karen, and it is followed by her suicide. In the film, however, Martha is present for Mrs. Tilford's apology and offer of money, so her suicide after this revelation undercuts its dramatic impact and drains the scene of its irony. Because of this restructuring of events, the film ends not with Mrs. Tilford's visit to an unforgiving Karen but with Martha's funeral.

The film, which opens with children at play, thus ends in a cemetery. Karen is standing at Martha's coffin, fingering a flower. Wyler opens up the scene to reveal the gravestones behind her and then cuts to Mrs. Tilford and Joe. Karen next escorts Lily Mortar to a cab and then walks the same roadway leading out of the cemetery. Wyler follows her in a deep-focus composition, foregrounding Joe and the graves while Karen seems almost lost in the distance. The central players in the drama are thus isolated amid the prevailing images of death. Karen's gait becomes bolder and changes to a stride as the camera shows her walking away. The image is ambivalent: Karen seems resolute but alone as she leaves behind Joe, the school, and her dead friend. Unlike
These Three
, which concludes with Karen and Joe finding each other in Vienna, the new film carries a death-inflected finality that would not have pleased Samuel Goldwyn but suited the mood of William Wyler.