William Wyler (46 page)

The script for the film is tinged with the politics of the time, which followed Wyler to Europe. He already had a script by Ben Hecht but was dissatisfied with it, so he worked on revisions while crossing the Atlantic on the
Queen Mary
with his brother Robert and Lester Koenig. According to Ian McLellan Hunter, who received an Oscar for the original story, Dalton Trumbo (one of the Hollywood Ten) actually wrote the story and asked Hunter to front for him when the property was initially sold to Frank Capra. Hunter gave Trumbo the money Paramount paid for the story and then wrote the first screenplay for Capra. He told Jan Herman: “I was given an Academy Award for a story that was clearly not mine. Had it [the award] been for the screenplay, I could have convinced myself that I had done most of it.”
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Hunter had no involvement with the film after Wyler took over, but he told Herman that, unlike Capra, Wyler was not scared off by either his or Trumbo's politics. Hunter ultimately shared credit for the screenplay with John Dighton, a British writer Wyler hired while in Rome in 1952. Trumbo received a posthumous Oscar for his work on the film, and his name was restored to the credits on the DVD version.

Roman Holiday
is Wyler's most free-floating film since signing with Goldwyn. From the opening credits, which feature some spectacular shots of Rome, Wyler seems to revel in the world around him. Apparently enjoying his Roman holiday as much as his heroine does, he eschews the closed, restricted constructions of his work since 1936: even Joe's small, one-room studio has a large window that faces a square, filling it with sunlight. It is as if getting out of America allowed Wyler to temporarily release his inhibitions and engage in the spirit of play. Yet, like the princess, Wyler knew he must eventually return to the real world and reengage with the politics of his own country—perhaps hoping that when he did so, America would behave with the decency and integrity Joe Bradley exhibits in refusing to “out” Princess Anne.

Despite the seeming joie de vivre exhibited in his film, Wyler was experiencing political problems of his own while in Rome. Those problems stemmed in part from his insistence on using Lester Koenig, who was blacklisted, as an associate producer on
The Heiress, Detective Story
, and
Carrie
. He also insisted on bringing Koenig to Rome to work on
Roman Holiday
. In December 1952 the right-wing newsletter
Counterattack
reported that Wyler invited two communists to the wrap party for that film. In January 1953 Wyler's close friend Paul Kohner wrote to inform him that “a very careful check [is] being made on all of your activities and associations in Europe,” including a meeting Wyler had attended in Switzerland with Irwin Shaw, Lester Koenig, Bernard Vorhaus, Joe Losey, and Bob Parrish. Kohner urged Wyler “not to take this thing lightly” and to talk with John Huston, who had experienced “the same situation with
MOULIN ROUGE
.” Kohner warned his friend of potential difficulties in getting backing for his next film if he did not deal more effectively with this delicate situation, and he recommended that Wyler speak with an attorney, Arthur Jacobs, who had handled things for John Huston and José Ferrer.
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In fact, Jacobs had written to Kohner the day before, suggesting, “I feel that I can, with Mr. Wyler's cooperation, alleviate any pressure that may be brought upon him now, or any unpleasant action against him that may be contemplated.” Jacobs even offered to fly to Europe to meet with Wyler, provided Wyler would cover his expenses.
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Three weeks later, Kohner reiterated that the fate of Wyler's film was secondary to “your own personal standing and the sooner you start to get yourself cleared like all the others are doing, the better it will be for you.” He told his friend, “Once what Talli [Wyler's wife] calls ‘such a clean-up job' is done, if it is done properly and right, it should be good for all time. The very fact that your movements over there are being reported, whether correctly or incorrectly, should indicate to you that this situation is a serious one.” Kohner again mentioned John Huston's situation, which he considered analogous to Wyler's: Huston, though aware that he was listed in the “Legion Magazine,” had not thought it necessary to do anything about the implications of that listing. Kohner again counseled Wyler to speak with Huston, whom Jacobs had managed to convince of the gravity of his situation. “But the fact is that before he [Huston] met with these people here, he was not aware of the work they were doing and was also not aware of how he was lured into organizations and causes which definitely now have been exposed as communistic fronts.”
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Wyler soon decided to take the advice he was getting. In 1953 Wyler was also corresponding with Art Arthur, executive secretary of the Motion Picture Industry Council, in an effort to clear his name. In a letter to Wyler, Arthur indicated that he had set up a meeting between the director and labor leader Roy Brewer, a studio-approved right-wing mediator, to discuss clearing his name. A few days later, he wrote to Wyler about the HUAC's list of “all in Hollywood who have been identified under oath as Communists up to the end of 1952,” adding that the list did not include “the names of people who might have been innocently or unintentionally associated with the committee.” He named John Garfield and José Ferrer as examples of the former and urged Wyler to use the list as a guide in an effort to remember “who might have been named and under what circumstances.”
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The director, however, was not quite out of the woods.

Y. Frank Freeman, production chief at Paramount, had berated Wyler for his careless behavior: “It is hard for anyone to understand how you would have these men as your guests knowing their record. You and I have discussed the Communist problem on several occasions.”
⁴⁰
In February 1954 he drafted a lengthy reply (never sent), making it clear that his political activism had always revolved around two principles: “Up to 1945: to fight Nazism and Facism [
sic
] abroad. After 1945: to fight for the preservation of civil liberties at home.” Wyler was adamant about his opposition to communism: “I was always fundamentally opposed to Communism and all its basic teachings, though not actively engaged in opposing it…. I strongly insist that any activity of mine in connection with, or in support of, Communist front organizations has been with the sincere belief that I was furthering one or another of the above two purposes, which I pursued with unvarying consistency.” He went on to deny that communists were attempting to gain control of the Screen Directors' Guild and spent considerable time discussing his involvement with the Committee for the First Amendment. His evaluation of the CFA's work and aims was filled with ambivalence, and he admitted having misgivings about the experience: “Many of us who joined sincerely, with the highest motives, have often regretted the whole thing.” He also tried to distance himself from the Hollywood Ten. He defended the CFA for standing up for the First Amendment but then backpedaled by writing that the Supreme Court decision rendered that belief “erroneous.” He went even further, complimenting the present House committee for acting with “decorum” and admitting that if the Thomas Committee had “conducted itself with dignity,” the CFA might have had no reason to oppose it. He remained steadfast in his defense of those among the Ten who were not communists but “were sacrificing themselves for a principle. It was these men whom I was anxious to defend.”
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The letter that Wyler finally mailed to Freeman, dated May 3, 1954, was shorter, less detailed, and less conciliatory. He was still adamant about his anticommunism, however: “I hate and oppose any form of dictatorship anywhere in the world. This of course includes the most dangerous of these: Communism.” He maintained that his participation in or support of certain organizations and activities had been based on “the sincere belief that I was either fighting Nazism abroad or helping preserve our civil liberties at home.” He admitted that some of these causes did not serve their avowed purpose, and he was wrong to lend his name to them: specifically, he cited his sponsorship of the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace and his signing of an amicus curiae brief on behalf of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. He defended his work with the CFA: “Most of us were motivated by a desire to defend what we believed to be basic American freedoms. We had no desire or intensions of defending Communists and Communism.” Consistent with his earlier draft, he regretted his support of the Hollywood Ten, asserting that he had not known that many of them were indeed communists and that if he had known “the facts that ultimately developed, I am sure, I would have done nothing to help them.”
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There are no other documents in Wyler's files on this issue. Whether the meeting with Brewer and the letter to Freeman cleared him is not completely clear. The attacks on Wyler by anticommunist groups, however, seem to have ceased.

Although the red-baiting started to ease off in 1954, after the Senate censured McCarthy, Lester Koenig did lose credit as Wyler's associate producer and screenwriter for
Roman Holiday
. Koenig had taken the Fifth in an earlier HUAC hearing, and his name had made the blacklist even before he left for Rome with Wyler to work on the film. Paramount wanted to fire Koenig, but Wyler interceded, convincing the studio that Koenig was essential to the production. In a letter written to defend his position after the film was released, Wyler reminded Freeman that Koenig was the only person, other than himself, who was familiar with the three script versions, “as well as much other material, all of which had to be put together into the final shooting script.”
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Koenig had been allowed to go to Rome with the understanding that he would testify upon his return. When he refused to do so, Paramount dropped his name from the released film, over Wyler's objections.

When Wyler returned to Hollywood in 1953, his political problems had soured his mood, and his last film for Paramount,
The Desperate Hours
, reflects that state of mind. Like
Detective Story
, it is an indoor piece, but here, the action is set in a suburban home, only occasionally shifting to scenes outside the house. Unlike
Roman Holiday
, which was filmed on location,
The Desperate Hours
was shot entirely on Paramount's sound stages—the studio even built a seven-room house to Wyler's specifications. This would be Wyler's last black-and-white film for some time, although he utilized Vista-Vision, a widescreen format developed in the 1950s to differentiate Hollywood's products from television.

Joseph Hayes's novel
The Desperate Hours
became one of the hottest literary properties in 1954 (even before it was published). The book was first serialized in
Collier's
magazine; it was then chosen as the main selection of the Literary Guild Book Club and eventually became a best seller. There was a bidding war for the film rights, and one of the most prominent seekers was Humphrey Bogart, who wanted to produce and star in the film for his Santana Productions. Although Bogart did not acquire the rights, he did end up costarring in the film. Wyler, who had read the unpublished manuscript and coveted the property, asked Paramount to top any bid. Hayes signed a deal with Paramount for $50,000 against a percentage of the gross. The studio also agreed to let him write the screenplay, and Hayes was excited at the prospect of working with Wyler. Hayes eventually signed another contract to turn his book into a Broadway play. Due to a strange confluence of events, the play was not written until after the film was completed, but the film was not released until after the play had closed.

Despite the fact that Hayes's theatrical version came after the making of the film, the two adaptations share a similar structure. The story revolves around three escaped convicts who terrorize a suburban family of four, holding them hostage while awaiting the arrival of their getaway money. The film's action takes place primarily in the Hilliard home, although there are a number of scenes in the police station, where both local and federal officers are looking for Glenn Griffin, the mastermind behind the escape. The irony of this variation on the standard sequence of composition is that while the screenplay is not technically an adaptation of a play, its confined setting makes the plot seem stage bound, and Wyler is unable to exploit the drama and excitement inherent in the basic situation.

Wyler never talked much about
The Desperate Hours
because, in all likelihood, he was dissatisfied with it. One problem was that he did not get the cast he wanted. His first choice for the role of Dan Hilliard, the father and protagonist, was Spencer Tracy. When Bogart was cast as Glenn Griffin, however, the two actors could not agree on top billing, and Tracy dropped out. Wyler's backup choices were Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda, but he could not secure their services either. Finally, at the suggestion of Don Hartman, who had recently become Paramount's head of production, Wyler settled for Fredric March, who had won an Oscar for
The Best Years of Our Lives
. Meanwhile, Wyler's first choice for the convict was not Bogart but either Marlon Brando or James Dean—believing that a much younger actor would be more menacing. At Hayes's urging, however, he eventually decided that having a middle-aged convict mirror the father's maturity—allowing the two to play off each other—would add dramatic value and tension to the film.
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Wyler shot the film in eight weeks, beginning in mid-October 1954 and finishing in mid-December. The play opened in New Haven a month later and premiered on Broadway in February 1955.

Like
Detective Story
, this film reflects the anxieties and paranoia of 1950s America. Michael Anderegg likens
The Desperate Hours
to Donald Siegel's
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1956), which some critics have read as a parable of the incursion of Soviet communism, fueled by the HUAC's investigations of communist infiltration into various aspects of American life. He notes, however, that Wyler's suburban family represents a “far less metaphysical embodiment than Siegel's aliens.”
⁴⁵
Certainly, the HUAC associations implicit in Hayes's plot were not lost on Wyler, but his film has a broader political message. Wyler's concern for America at this time—and the likely message of Siegel's film as well—is his fear of conformity and the resultant loss of individuality. As Wyler indicated in his letter to Freeman, the primary motivation for his political activism was standing up for individual liberty.
The Desperate Hours
is a parable, warning against the use of force as a mechanism of social control.