William Wyler (25 page)

The final moments of the film, as Heathcliff takes the dying Cathy in his arms so that she can see the moors from the windowed doorway to the balcony, summarize—as Harrington points out—all the windowed images in the film:
⁶
the banging window shutter in the opening sequence, Lockwood reaching his hand through the window and feeling Cathy's spirit, Heathcliff shoving his hands through a window after Cathy goes off with Edgar, the two camera movements through the window into the Linton house, and Cathy crying “I
am
Heathcliff,” with the windows behind her. All these carefully composed scenes are contrived to represent the emotional turmoil raging within the characters, as well as demarcating the boundaries between nature and society, between the world of experience and that of the imagination.

These same conflicts were explored by Wyler in different ways in earlier films.
Counsellor-at-Law
's George Simon is torn between his immigrant past (his true self) and the “real American” he wants to become.
These Three's
Karen and Martha expect to live peacefully and happily in the insular world of their own creation until an evil harbored within their walls destroys it. Dodsworth is torn between his love for his wife, which is destroying who he is, and his growing need to declare his independence and restore his sense of self. Julie Marsden chafes at being bound by social rules but realizes too late that she has lost her chance at happiness by prioritizing her independent spirit. Barney Glasgow, like Catherine, ruins his life by choosing society and success over love.

Wuthering Heights
is Wyler's most self-consciously experimental film. Its weaknesses derive from Merle Oberon's failure to bring alive the earthier aspects of Cathy—much of her performance seems forced—and from Olivier's struggle with dialogue that is overly literary and announces its theme too often. Olivier credited Wyler with teaching him how to act for the camera, but much of his performance remains theatrical and contrived—as if he were trying to compensate for Oberon's lack of vitality in the emotional scenes. Wyler, however, manages to offset these shortcomings with his camera work, realizing the spirit of the novel with his technical and visual virtuosity. In
Wuthering Heights
, he consolidates and articulates his themes in dramatic cinematic terms, heralding his status as an auteur.

There is a postscript to this story. The film, as conceived, ends with Heathcliff's death. After hearing Lockwood's tale of hearing and seeing a woman at the window of the bridal chamber, Heathcliff rushes into the storm to Pennistone Crag, where he freezes to death. The published screenplay ends with the following description: “It [the camera] dissolves to
HEATHCLIFF
lying at the
CRAG
, his flesh frosted in death, and this sight dissolves to a series of views of the moors as
CATHY
and
HEATHCLIFF
beheld them in the springs, summers and winters of their youth, ending with
TWO
BIRDS
hovering over the ‘
CASTLE
,' then flying away into the winter sky.”
⁷

Wyler is not wholly sympathetic to any of his characters who try to turn back the clock or make time stand still—both Fran Dodsworth and Barney Glasgow are ultimately defeated. Catherine Earnshaw also makes a tragic mistake, which she recognizes and pays for, while Heathcliff is so obsessed by his need for revenge that he destroys others. This couple's wild and destructive passions exploded Hollywood's standard template for romantic movies (as did
Dodsworth
by focusing on a middle-aged couple).
Variety
put it best:
“Wuthering Heights
in theme, characters, plot and setting possesses not one familiar attribute for which studio scenario departments search zealously through thousands of manuscripts, plays, novels, and synopses. It violates all the accepted rules of successful film stories. Its leading characters are something less than sympathetic—they are psychopathic exhibits.”
⁸

This rebellious quality was precisely what initially attracted Wyler, who gravitated toward stories and characters that veered from the norm. The film's original ending was consistent with Wyler's view of characters who are either unable or unwilling to mature or who make wrong choices. (Judge Roy Bean in
The Westerner
meets a similar fate.) Goldwyn, however—motivated in part by a disastrous preview held two weeks after the last retakes were completed—insisted on a “happier” ending. The audience response cards from that showing were among the worst Goldwyn had ever read.
⁹
The audience found the film hard to follow and the final image off-putting. Goldwyn asked Flora Robson, who was still in Hollywood, to read several speeches designed to tie episodes of the film together. He also wanted Wyler to create the illusion of a happy ending by showing the star-crossed couple's spirits walking off into the mist and snow together. Wyler recalled, “He didn't want to look at a corpse at the fadeout. So he asked me to make a shot of them walking hand in hand through the clouds to show that they were together in heaven. I told him there was no way I would shoot it.”
¹⁰
Despite Wyler's refusal to violate the spirit of his film, Goldwyn was undeterred. He asked Henry Potter to film the closing image of Olivier's and Oberon's doubles from the back. Wyler always maintained that the resulting image was horrible, but the audience loved it. With Goldwyn's corrections, the second preview was a great success.

Wyler's first western since
Hell's Heroes
in 1930,
The Westerner
is, naturally, an outdoor film. By 1939, when it was made, the genre was reemerging in John Ford's
Stagecoach
and Cecil B. DeMille's
Union Pacific. The Westerner
was released in 1940, a year that also featured Fritz Lang's
The Return of Jesse James
, Michael Curtiz's
Virginia City
, and Henry King's
Jesse James
. The return of the western was a sign that the Depression was waning, for the genre reflected a sense of optimism that celebrated America's founding myth. The Roosevelt administration fostered this buoyancy through the National Recovery Administration's and Works Progress Administration's support for artists, the writing of state guidebooks, and other initiatives of the Federal Writers' Project. Unlike the gangster film, which had ushered in the decade, the western suggested that America's story was moving forward.

The Westerner
exhibits many western themes and motifs that had been introduced in literature and echoed in earlier films but would become mainstreamed as these films matured and deepened in the 1940s and 1950s. Wyler's film is notable, however, for its reshuffling of these standard themes, presenting them in unusual ways. In their survey of the western genre, George Fenin and William Everson describe
The Westerner
as “one of the most outstanding films of the period” but also as “strange, moody, and unevenly paced.”
¹¹
All these judgments are true. Wyler and his writers—Jo Swerling, Niven Busch, and Stuart N. Lake—take on a variety of themes: the solitary hero/drifter and his relationship to the land, wilderness versus civilization, homesteaders versus cattlemen, and the impact of the law (represented by the historical figure of Judge Roy Bean) on an emerging town. Wyler also tosses in another historical character, Lillie Langtry, as an idealized woman with whom Bean is infatuated—thus introducing an aspect of his character that complicates our reaction to him. Also, the relationship between the hero, Cole Hardin (Gary Cooper), and Bean (Walter Brennan) clearly interests Wyler more than Hardin's evolving romance with Jane-Ellen Mathews (Doris Davenport), the outspoken daughter of a homesteader who opposes Bean and his idea of frontier justice.

Goldwyn intended
The Westerner
to be a quickie project, rushing it into production partly to take advantage of the popularity of
Stagecoach
and partly because, owing to his ongoing distribution battle with United Artists, he needed a success. As studio head, he hoped the combination of his star director and his star contract player, Gary Cooper, would turn the property into a moneymaker.

Goldwyn bought a story and treatment (dated May 12, 1939) from Stuart N. Lake, which was tentatively titled
Vinegarroon
, after the town where Bean had settled and set up his court. Niven Busch said of the treatment, “There was really only a slim tracing of story and no character for Cooper at all.”
¹²
In actuality, Lake's story was well fleshed out and detailed—although much of it was eventually jettisoned—and it featured a substantial role for Cooper. However, Goldwyn faced some legal haggling over the rights to the story of Roy Bean. Darryl F. Zanuck wrote to him in July and claimed that he owned the rights to a book,
The Law West of the Pecos
by Everett Lloyd, and had been “dickering with MGM who wanted to buy it for Wallace Beery…. I have an entire script on the subject and I have a considerable amount invested in it.” Zanuck informed Goldwyn that Lake knew of the story and had asked several times to work on it, and then he made an offer: “If you are actually going ahead with the picture, I will be perfectly willing to sell you the rights that we own for exactly what they stand us.”
¹³

Goldwyn immediately contacted Lake, complaining that he should not have accepted his money if he knew that Zanuck was working on the same story. Lake sent Goldwyn a detailed reply, pointing out that the first copyright recorded on the Roy Bean saga was a story he had published in the
Saturday Evening Post
on February 7, 1931. Lake further stated that Zanuck had contacted him about using this story as a vehicle for Will Rogers in March 1931, but Rogers had expressed no interest. In addition, Lake noted that Zanuck had filed his intent to make
The Law West of the Pecos
with the Hays office in 1933 and that Lloyd's book had been published and copyrighted in May 1931, three months after his own story had appeared in the
Post
.
¹⁴

The issue must have been resolved in Goldwyn's favor, because in August he told Zanuck that he could not loan him Walter Brennan for
The Grapes of Wrath
because the actor was working on “the Judge Roy Bean story.”
¹⁵
Meanwhile, Goldwyn also learned that his favorite screenwriter, Lillian Hellman, was “very disappointed in
Vinegarroon”
and “not interested in the Judge Bean character.”
¹⁶
Oliver La Farge was also consulted, but he thought the story made Bean too comic and trivial a figure. La Farge believed that Bean was a man with a vision who knew that outlaws needed to be expelled from the Pecos territory and law established before the coming of the railroad. He wrote, “Some distinction clings to him for all his roughness.”
¹⁷

Lake's original story provides an elaborate backstory for protagonist Steve Randall, who becomes Cole Hardin in the film. Randall is a glamorous figure who lives on Fifth Avenue in New York City in the 1880s and is the son of a senator who played a pivotal role in ousting Boss Tweed. Steve himself is more of a sportsman and a ladies' man. When we meet him, he is courting Lydia Lyndow, the “Damask Rose,” a ballerina from Europe who is one of the most famous beauties in the history of the theater and is currently on a tour of America. Steve meets Lydia when her carriage is hijacked as she rides through Central Park; he slows down the horses and takes control of the carriage. (This incident is used in later drafts of the script to introduce Lillie Langtry.)

This eastern story alternates with what is happening out west, until the two narrative strands finally merge. Lake writes that the territory west of the Pecos River harbors many criminals, including some from the East who have taken refuge there to avoid extradition. One of these men is Dapper Dan McClosky, a fugitive from Boss Tweed who was sent there by Randall's father. Now head of a western gang, he prospers by turning stolen goods into cash. Roy Bean is the law in Vinegarroon, as well as a saloon owner who is anxious to take advantage of whatever new business will be generated once the railroad comes through. He, too, is in love with Lydia Lyndow, even though she is “as unattainable as the stars.” Also introduced is Blanche Colton, an “authentic young woman of the frontier” who runs the local eating-house with her mother.

As the story progresses, Steve is framed for murder by Dan McClosky's brother. Not wanting to disgrace his father, he escapes from New York and heads to the territory west of the Pecos. There, he is accused of stealing a horse and is brought before Judge Bean, whose courtroom/bar is decorated with pictures of Lydia Lyndow. Having read about Steve and Lydia in the paper, however, Bean suspends his sentence. Steve begins to work for Bean, bringing criminals to justice. Meanwhile, back in New York, a friend of Steve's has informed Lydia that Steve is innocent of the murder charge that caused him to flee.

When the railroad comes to Vinegarroon, Bean leaves Steve in charge when he goes to attend a performance that Lydia is giving on her tour of the West. This substitution lays the groundwork for the evolving love story between Steve and Blanche Colton, who will tend to him when he is wounded in an attack by the McClosky gang. When Bean returns, he renames the town Lydia and his bar the Damask Rose.

Lydia decides to visit the town that is now named for her and offers to give a performance there. She tries to resurrect her relationship with Steve, asking him to return to New York with her and promising to marry him when her tour is over. Steve refuses, telling her that he has obligations to Bean and the town.

McClosky uses Lydia's concert as a cover to attack the town again. Blanche protects Lydia during the battle, during which Bean is shot. After McClosky surrenders, Bean orders Steve to hang the man and then dies while he stares at Lydia for the last time. At Bean's funeral, Steve informs Lydia that he belongs in the West, remarking, “This country burns its own brand,” and stating, “I never thought I could come to love such an unlovely land.” Recognizing that Steve has transferred his affections to Blanche as well, Lydia bids them farewell, and the last scene is of Steve and Blanche holding hands as they walk up the road.