William Wyler (55 page)

Freddie has promised to let Miranda go after a month, and on what is to be their last night together, he gives her a white dress to wear to their “last supper.” When he comes to fetch her for the occasion, she looks lovely and virginal in the dress.
⁶
He has prepared a lovely table with flowers, champagne, and caviar, and he tells her, “I will be lonely here without you.” Wyler films this remark in a suggestive three-shot, with Freddie in the foreground and Miranda's framed self-portrait hanging in the rear, while she stands in the middle. Over dinner, he proposes marriage, but when she accepts as a ploy to facilitate her escape, he goes mad. Again, Wyler uses the shot–reverse shot technique, as the camera moves in ever so slowly on Freddie's face. Reacting to his dangerous look, she runs from him. Once more, he chloroforms her—this time in his butterfly room—and carries her up the stairs. The upward movement here is a progress toward death, or death in life. Placing her gently on his bed, he lies down next to her and takes her in his arms. Freddie has now achieved his dream: he has embraced a ghost.

In the next scene, Miranda is seen descending the stairs after a bath and attempting to seduce Freddie. She embraces him, entices him to kiss her, and then undresses. Clearly distressed, Freddie can barely look at her. Instead, he mostly looks away and yells that he could buy what she is offering in London, and he rips her portrait off the wall. She has become flesh and destroyed his ideal. Realizing suddenly that she will never get out of there alive, Miranda runs to the door and escapes into a rainstorm. As they are about to enter her dungeon, she grabs a shovel and hits him over the head, drawing blood. She is horrified by what she has done, and her hesitation allows Freddie to run after her and imprison her again. In this case, however, the rainwater—here mixed with the blood of Freddie Clegg—will not be redemptive, as it is in
Ben-Hur
. When he returns from the hospital, Miranda is suffering from pneumonia and soon dies. Freddie is unrepentant. The final scene shows him in his van, following another woman.

The Collector
is Wyler's darkest film, evidently conveying his rebuttal to the quasi-religious, redemptive ending of
Ben-Hur
. He flattens out Fowles's characters, eliminating much of the detail of their lives.
⁷
The film's Miranda is more likable—and therefore more of a victim—than her counterpart in the novel. Freddie, too, seems more vulnerable in the film, for Stamp gives him a boyish charm (again, like Norman Bates) that is emphasized visually by having Freddie dress in a suit and tie nearly every time he comes calling on Miranda. The diminished complexity of the film's characters allows Wyler to concentrate more intensely on the dynamic of victim and victimizer. And he crystallizes this theme by making a dramatic change at the end of the film. Whereas Fowles's Miranda is simply not strong enough to overpower Freddie, Wyler's Miranda, after hitting her captor with a shovel, is horrified by what she has done, and although she has the opportunity to deliver a second and potentially fatal blow, she cannot do it. In Wyler's hands, this character's revulsion against violence links her to the protagonists of his earlier films examining the limits of pacifism. In this case, Miranda's inability to match her jailer's cruelty seals her fate.

The film received some glowing reviews and some that were more reserved. Stanley Kaufman, in the
New Republic
, found the film version superior to Fowles's novel. Andrew Sarris (Wyler's nemesis) characterized Wyler's direction as “impersonal,” yet he still called it “the most erotic movie to come out past the production code.” He went on to say: “Yet I can't think of anything more exciting and more cinematic than locking up a boy and girl in an old house and an intriguing situation. Just as the human voice is the most sublime musical instrument, the human face and body are the most sublime visual subjects, and one shot of Samantha Eggar's elongated leg turning on a water faucet is worth every shot of every antelope that ever roamed.”
⁸

Wyler took the film to Cannes, where he gave numerous interviews and conceded that he did not like the film's French title,
L'Obsede
, because it revealed too much of the story's central theme before it could be developed onscreen. The Cannes jury awarded its best acting prizes to Stamp and Eggar—the first time in the festival's history that both awards went to actors from the same film—and
Cahiers du Cinema
called it one of Wyler's best films. Wyler was also nominated for an Oscar as Best Director for the twelfth and final time. (Eggar was nominated as well, as was the screenplay.) Ironically, however, the Best Director prize for 1965 went to Robert Wise for
The Sound of Music
.

After making three bleak films for Paramount between 1949 and 1952, and weary from the HUAC battles, Wyler had escaped to Rome, where he directed the charming
Roman Holiday
and made Audrey Hepburn a star in the process. Now, after making three films devoted to examining man's inhumanity to man, followed by the deeply pessimistic
The Collector
, Wyler took another break. This time, he flew off to Paris to make another trifle,
How to Steal a Million
, again with Audrey Hepburn. Wyler was especially pleased by the French shooting schedule. He told a reporter, “It's a miserable life in Hollywood. You're up at five or six o'clock in the morning to be ready to start shooting at nine. The working hours aren't arranged to suit the artists and the director; they're for the convenience of the technicians.” In Paris, though, “you start at noon. Then you work right through to seven-thirty. It's much less exhausting that way. Anyhow, who can play a love scene at nine o'clock in the morning?”
⁹

How to Steal a Million
(originally titled
Venus Rising)
would be Wyler's first caper film. The opportunity to explore a new genre, work with Hepburn again, and direct Peter O'Toole, who was a hot young star at the time, made the project irresistible to Wyler. The top supporting role, Hepburn's father, went to Hugh Griffith, who had won an Oscar as Sheik Ilderim in
Ben-Hur
. The plot revolves around Hepburn and O'Toole's attempt to pull off a museum heist. Hepburn's father, a successful creator and purveyor of art forgeries, has loaned a replica of Cellini's
Venus
(made by his own father) to the museum. When they learn that the museum intends to authenticate the statue for insurance purposes, Hepburn hires O'Toole to help her steal the
Venus
. O'Toole turns out to be a private detective who is investigating Hepburn's father. Naturally, they fall in love in a very Wylerian spot—a cramped broom closet, where they are waiting for the museum to close so they can steal the statue. After a variety of complications, all ends well for the two lovers.

When the shoot for
How to Steal a Million
was almost over, Wyler was honored with a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française. He attended the first film,
The Little Foxes
, but was too busy tending to the final details of his current project to participate in the homage. The program notes, written by Henri Langlois, state that “toward the end of the 1930s [Wyler] created a new style. It is fitting to associate with Wyler the turning point which—by error of judgment now corrected by the passage of time—postwar critics attributed to
Citizen Kane
, when in fact, Welles in this film, was still groping and being influenced by Wyler.”
¹⁰

How to Steal a Million
, an old-fashioned Hollywood comedy, was quite out of step with many of the films being produced in the 1960s, and it got a less than enthusiastic reception from critics and the public. Nevertheless, Fox wanted Wyler to remain with the studio. The Zanucks offered him a four-picture deal that called for Wyler to direct two films at $500,000 each and to produce two more at $300,000 each; he would also receive a percentage of the gross revenues for the four films. His first project was to be
Patton
, which Darryl Zanuck would produce (hoping to replicate the success of his recent megahit
The Longest Day)
. For Wyler, the subject matter offered a step back into the past and an opportunity to rethink aspects of the war. He had never made a studio film dealing directly with World War II, and as such, the project presented him with some interesting challenges.

Making a film about George S. Patton was a pet project of producer Frank McCarthy, who had first proposed it in 1951. McCarthy, a retired brigadier general, had been a top aide to Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and had at one point actually worked under Patton. The film was going to be made in Spain because it had all the necessary architecture and landscape to duplicate the various battle scenes; in addition, the Spanish army still maintained World War II hardware in working condition.
Patton
was budgeted at more than $10 million, and filming was set to begin in February 1967. McCarthy had commissioned a script from a recent film school graduate, Francis Ford Coppola, but there were some problems with its narrative structure. (Coppola did, however, pen the film's famous opening speech with the American flag in the background.) To work out the problems, Wyler wanted James Webb, a World War II veteran who was familiar with Patton and had worked with the director on
The Big Country
. Webb's hiring, however, delayed production, for he could not begin script revisions until March. With no starting date in sight, Wyler was free to pursue another project in the meantime. So he accepted when Columbia asked him to replace Sidney Lumet as the director of the big-budget musical
Funny Girl
, which was to be Barbra Streisand's film debut.

Funny Girl
was originally intended to be a film, but it ended up being a film version of a successful Broadway show. The whole enterprise was the creation of Ray Stark, an agent turned producer who formed Seven Arts Productions with Eliot Hyman in 1957. Stark, who was married to Fanny Brice's daughter, wanted to produce a sanitized, laudatory film biography that would please the family. He had commissioned a screenplay from Ben Hecht as early as 1948, but that effort was deemed unsatisfactory by the family, as was a revision by Phoebe and Henry Ephron three years later. The project was eventually turned over to Isobel Lennart, who had written the screenplay for
Love Me or Leave Me
, based on the life of singer Ruth Etting. Her working titles for the screenplay were “Fanny” and then “My Man.” No studio showed any interest in the project, but when stage director Vincent Donehue read the script, he was convinced it would make a great stage drama. He contacted Mary Martin, who was then enjoying success on Broadway in
The Sound of Music
. She expressed interest, so plans got under way to turn the Fanny Brice story into a big-budget Broadway musical.

It was Barbra Streisand, however, who eventually won the role of Fanny Brice. Mary Martin, citing problems with the book, withdrew early in the process. Stark's wife then wanted Anne Bancroft, while Jerome Robbins, hired to choreograph and direct, wanted Carol Burnett. Jule Styne, who composed the music, wanted a singer—not an actress who could get by as a singer. He had seen Streisand, who had a featured role in the musical
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
, starring her then-husband Elliott Gould and directed by Styne's collaborator on
Gypsy
, Arthur Laurents.
¹¹
Streisand eventually convinced everyone that she was perfect for the part of Fanny Brice. Her performance made Broadway history.

When the show's Broadway run ended, Streisand was signed to reprise the role in London, and Ray Stark announced that she would make her film debut in
Funny Girl
. Columbia wanted to buy the film rights but balked at signing Streisand, whom the studio heads considered too Jewish, too unattractive, and too inexperienced to carry a film. They wanted Shirley MacLaine instead. Stark, however, was adamant. Streisand had signed a four-picture deal with him in 1965, guaranteeing her the movie version of
Funny Girl
for a salary of $250,000, plus a small percentage of the box office. Stark ultimately convinced Columbia president Mike Frankovich to accept both the project and Streisand by agreeing to a modest budget for a musical: $8.5 million. When the Starks threw a party at their home to welcome Streisand to Hollywood in May 1967, she had already been signed to appear in two other highly anticipated big-budget musicals—
Hello, Dolly!
and
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
—and she had not yet made a single film.

After considering Gene Kelly (who would later direct Streisand in
Hello, Dolly!)
and George Roy Hill, Stark, at Streisand's request, decided to choose a director associated with dramas rather than musicals. Convinced that the weakest element of the stage production had been the development of the relationship between Fanny and Nicky Arnstein, he wanted a director who could effectively handle the personal drama at the heart of the story. In the summer of 1967, Stark announced that he had signed Sidney Lumet (
Twelve Angry Men, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroker
) to direct his film. By January, however, Lumet was no longer associated with the project, which led to the hiring of Wyler.

Stark had been interested in hiring Wyler to direct the film as early as the Broadway run. Like Streisand, he appreciated Wyler's flair for dramatic material and his ability to help actors bring nuance to their performances. Indeed, Streisand saw
Funny Girl
as essentially a dramatic film with musical numbers and was “thrilled when Wyler accepted.”
¹²
Wyler, who at first turned the film down because he felt he was too hard of hearing to direct a musical, eventually accepted the assignment, largely because of Streisand's participation: “I wouldn't have made the picture without her. She's an interesting performer and represented a challenge for me because she's never been in films, and she's not the usual glamour girl.”
¹³
Wyler was being a bit disingenuous here, since he had stipulated a number of conditions before agreeing to direct his first musical. He insisted that the film be billed as a “William Wyler–Ray Stark Production,” that his work be completed in time for him to shoot
Patton
, and that a first-rate choreographer be found to stage the musical numbers. To satisfy the last condition, Stark hired Herb Ross, who had staged the musical numbers for
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
and had choreographed the dance sequences for
Dr. Doolittle
.