William WylerFilmography

The Liberation of L.B. Jones

Crew: Director

Actors: Lee J. Cobb, Anthony Zerbe, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lola Falana, Lee Majors

Synopsis: Justice runs red in the deep South in this powerful drama. Steve Mundine (Lee Majors) is a young lawyer who, shortly after marrying his sweetheart Nella (Barbara Hershey), takes a position with a law firm in a small Southern town, run by his uncle Oman Hedgepath (Lee J. Cobb). L.B. Jones (Roscoe Read More

Funny Girl

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, Kay Medford, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon

Synopsis: "Hello, gorgeous!" was Barbra Streisand's first comment to the Oscar statuette which she won for her performance in this biopic of entertainer Fanny Brice. This is also her first line in the film itself, the catalyst for a movie-long flashback. Repeating her Broadway role, Streisand stars as Read More

How to Steal a Million

Crew: Director

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith, Charles Boyer

Synopsis: In this elegant "caper" film, Audrey Hepburn stars as the daughter of a wealthy Parisian (Hugh Griffith), whose hobby is copying famous works of art. His replica of a famed Cellini sculpture is inadvertently displayed in an art museum, and he begins to worry that he'll lose his reputation once the Read More

The Collector

Crew: Director

Actors: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Maurice Dallimore, Mona Washbourne, William Bickley

Synopsis: John Fowles's novel The Collector was written in the form of a dual diary, one kept by a kidnapper, the other by his victim. The film is told almost exclusively from the point of view of the former, a nerdish British bank clerk named Freddy Clegg (Terence Stamp). A neurotic recluse whose only Read More

The Children's Hour

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, Miriam Hopkins, Fay Bainter

Synopsis: Based on the 1934 play by Lillian Hellman, The Children's Hour is set at an exclusive girl's school managed by best friends Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. When student Karen Balkin is punished for one of her many misdeeds, the mean-spirited youngster rushes to her wealthy aunt Fay Bainter Read More

Ben-Hur

Crew: Director

Actors: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Hugh Griffith

Synopsis: This 1959 version of Lew Wallace's best-selling novel, which had already seen screen versions in 1907 and 1926, went on to win 11 Academy Awards. Adapted by Karl Tunberg and a raft of uncredited writers including Gore Vidal and Maxwell Anderson, the film once more recounts the tale of Jewish Read More

The Big Country

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives

Synopsis: In The Big Country Gregory Peck plays a seafaring man who heads west to marry Carroll Baker, the daughter of rancher Charles Bickford. Bickford is currently embroiled in a water-rights feud with covetous Burl Ives, so both he and his daughter are hoping that Peck can take care of himself. But Read More

Friendly Persuasion

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Marjorie Main, Robert Middleton, Richard Eyer

Synopsis: Adapted from the best-selling novel by Jessamyn West, Friendly Persuasion is set in Southern Indiana in the early days of the Civil War. Gary Cooper plays Jess Birdwell, patriarch of a Quaker family which does not believe in warfare. Birdwell's son Josh (Anthony Perkins) wishes to adhere to his Read More

The Desperate Hours

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy, Martha Scott, Dewey Martin

Synopsis: Based on the novel and play by Joseph Hayes, which in turn was inspired by an actual event, The Desperate Hours is the prototypical "family-trapped-by-criminals" drama. Escaped convicts Humphrey Bogart, Robert Middleton and Dewey Martin, seeking an appropriate hideout until they can make contact Read More

Roman Holiday

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert, Hartley Power, Harcourt Williams

Synopsis: Audrey Hepburn became a star with this film, in which she played Princess Anne, weary of protocol and anxious to have some fun before she is mummified by "affairs of state." On a diplomatic visit to Rome, Anne escapes her royal retainers and scampers incognito through the Eternal City. She happens Read More

Carrie

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Laurence Olivier, Jennifer Jones, Eddie Albert, Miriam Hopkins, Basil Ruysdael

Synopsis: Carrie is based on Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser's clumsy, unwieldy prose is streamlined into a neat and precise screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Jennifer Jones stars as Carrie, who leaves her go-nowhere small town for the wicked metropolis of Chicago. Here she becomes Read More

Detective Story

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Lee Grant, Bert Freed, George Macready, Cathy O'Donnell

Synopsis: Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Detective Story was praised for its realistic view of an event-filled day in a single police precinct station. The film, directed by meticulous taskmaster William Wyler, manages to retain this realism, even allowing for the star-turn performance of Kirk Douglas. A Read More

The Heiress

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, Vanessa Brown

Synopsis: Henry James based his 1881 novella Washington Square on a real-life incident, wherein a young actor of his acquaintance married an unattractive but very wealthy young woman for the express purpose of living the rest of his life in luxury. Washington Square was turned into a stage play in 1946 by Read More

The Best Years of Our Lives

Crew: Director

Actors: Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Virginia Mayo

Synopsis: The postwar classic The Best Years of Our Lives, based on a novel in verse by MacKinlay Kantor about the difficult readjustments of returning World War II veterans, tells the intertwined homecoming stories of ex-sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), former bombadier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) Read More

Thunderbolt

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Filmed in Technicolor, Thunderbolt was the last of Major William Wyler's wartime directorial efforts on behalf of the US Army Air Corps. As in his previous WW2 documentaries, Wyler himself participated in the mission that he depicts herein on film. The title refers to the huge bombers used by the Read More

Fighting Lady

Crew: Director

Synopsis: One of three morale-boosting government documentaries directed by Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler (the others were The Memphis Belle and Thunderbolt), The Fighting Lady follows the exploits of an aircraft carrier, its crew, and the planes transported on its deck. The officers and enlistees are Read More

The Memphis Belle

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Filmed in color, The Memphis Belle has long been held up as a "model" wartime documentary. In a terse, exciting 41 minutes, the film assembles footage from several allied bombing missions into one single representative flight of the famed Flying Fortress known as The Memphis Belle. Though both the Read More

Report from the Aleutians

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The semi-feature-length wartime documentary Report From the Aleutians was written and directed by Captain John Huston. It was one of three such films turned out between 1942 and 1945 while Huston was assigned to the Signal Corps. In detailing the day-to-day activities of protecting Alaska's Read More

Mrs. Miniver

Crew: Director

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning Read More

The Little Foxes

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Richard Carlson, Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: Playwright Lillian Hellman first wrote of the horrible Hubbard family in her 1939 play The Little Foxes. In this lavish 1941 film version, Bette Davis takes over for Broadway's Tallulah Bankhead in the role of conniving turn-of-the-century Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens. Regina's Read More

The Letter

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Sen Yung

Synopsis: William Wyler's dark and poisonous melodrama, based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel, features Bette Davis in one of her nastiest roles. The story begins in the shimmering moonlight on a tropical Malayan rubber plantation. Shots ring out and a wounded man, Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell) staggers Read More

The Westerner

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone, Forrest Tucker

Synopsis: The town of Vinegaroon, TX, is the home to Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), who calls himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos." Bean keeps a saloon, where he also conducts trials, using his office to get fat on fines and the seizure of property, and hanging most of those who get in his way Read More

Wuthering Heights

Crew: Director

Actors: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson, Geraldine Fitzgerald

Synopsis: William Wyler's Wuthering Heights is one of the earliest screen adaptations of the classic Emily Brontë novel. A traveler named Lockwood (Miles Mander) is caught in the snow and stays at the estate of Wuthering Heights, where the housekeeper, Ellen Dean (Flora Robson), sits down to tell him the Read More

Jezebel

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Crisp, Fay Bainter

Synopsis: In 1938, Jezebel was widely regarded as Warner Bros.' "compensation" to Bette Davis for her losing the opportunity to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Resemblances between the two properties are inescapable: Jezebel heroine Julie Marsden (Davis) is a headstrong Southern belle not unlike Read More

Dead End

Crew: Director

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor

Synopsis: Adapted by Lillian Hellman from Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play, Dead End concerns itself with several denizens of New York's East River district. Here the elite and the slum-dwellers rub shoulders due to the close proximity of the riverfront tenements with the East Side luxury hotels. Slum girl Read More

Dodsworth

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven

Synopsis: In this highly acclaimed adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel, Walter Huston plays Sam Dodsworth, a good-hearted, middle-aged man who runs an auto manufacturing firm. His wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) is obsessed with the notion that she's growing old, and she eventually persuades Sam to sell his Read More

These Three

Crew: Director

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, Joel McCrea, Catherine Doucet, Alma Kruger

Synopsis: Lillian Hellman's 1934 Broadway play The Children's Hour was such a hot potato that film producer Samuel Goldwyn was denied Production Code permission to use the play's original title. The reason was the story's lesbian theme, a factor that also blocked The Children's Hour from winning a Pulitzer Read More

Come and Get It

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer, Walter Brennan, Andrea Leeds

Synopsis: Set in the woodlands of Wisconsin, Come and Get It stars Edward Arnold as a logger-turned-lumber tycoon. In his rise to the top, Arnold loses out on a chance for lasting happiness by spurning earthy dance hall girl (Frances Farmer), who marries his best pal (Walter Brennan) on the rebound. Read More

The Gay Deception

Crew: Director

Actors: Francis Lederer, Frances Dee, Benita Hume, Alan Mowbray, Lennox Pawle, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: Francis Lederer stars as the prince of a mythical European kingdom. To mingle with the "common folk" while on a visit to New York, he takes a job as a hotel doorman. In this capacity he meets Frances Dee, a small-town secretary who has likewise come to Manhattan to put a little variety in her Read More

The Good Fairy

Crew: Director

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Margaret Sullavan graduates from a girl's orphanage to an usherette's job at a Budapest movie theatre. Bibulous millionaire Frank Morgan makes a play for Margaret, but she keeps him at arm's length by picking a name from the phone book and insists that that's the name of her husband. The man Read More

Glamour

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Lukas, Constance Cummings, Phillip Reed, Joseph Cawthorn, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: Another of director William Wyler's "apprenticeship" films, Glamour is based on a story by Edna Ferber. The original story covered 24 hours in the life of actress Linda Fayne (Constance Cummings), who is so busy with her career that there's no time left over for her baby. This plotline was used as Read More

Her First Mate

Crew: Director

Actors: George "Slim" Summerville, ZaSu Pitts, Una Merkel, Warren Hymer, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: One wonders if William Wyler ever gave Her First Mate a second thought when he was busy directing such subsequent films as The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver,The Best Years of Our Lives and Ben-Hur. This early Wyler efforts stars Slim Summerville and ZaSu Pitts as John and Mary Horner; he's a peanut Read More

Counsellor-At-Law

Crew: Director

Actors: John Barrymore, Bebe Daniels, Doris Kenyon, Onslow Stevens, Isabel Jewell

Synopsis: Adapted from the play by Elmer Rice, Counsellor-at-Law is the story of a successful Jewish lawyer George Simon (John Barrymore) who finds it's lonely at the top. Simon's wife (Doris Kenyon) and children look down upon him because of his humble upbringings, while his mother reprimands him for Read More

Tom Brown of Culver

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Brown, H.B. Warner, George "Slim" Summerville, Richard Cromwell, Ben Alexander

Synopsis: William Wyler directed this melodramatic story about a boy who, after growing up in the shadow of his father, learns the old man wasn't all he claimed to be. Tom Brown (played, as coincidence would have it, by an actor named Tom Brown) is a boy who has been struggling to help his mother keep body Read More

A House Divided

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Huston, Kent Douglass, Helen Chandler, Vivien Oakland, Frank S. Hagney

Synopsis: "A house divided against itself cannot stand" declared Abraham Lincoln; proof that a house divided can be repaired is provided in this early talkie effort from director William Wyler. Walter Huston plays alcoholic fisherman Seth Law, who, recently widowed, signs up for a mail-order bride. Ruth Read More

Hell's Heroes

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bickford, Fred Kohler, Fritzi Ridgeway, Maria Alba, Raymond Hatton

Synopsis: William Wyler was still primarily a western specialist when he was assigned to direct Hell's Heroes. Based on Peter B. Kyne's Three Godfathers (which was filmed officially and unofficially several times), the story deals with three frontier bandits (Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton, and Fred Kohler Sr Read More

The Storm

Crew: Director

Actors: Lupe Velez, Paul Cavanagh, William "Stage" Boyd, Alphonse Ethier, Ernie S. Adams

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1916 and 1922, Langdon McCormick's theatrical chestnut Men Without Skirts was pulled out of mothballs for a third time in 1930, this time rechristened The Storm. Lupe Velez stars as Nanette, the daughter of French-Canadian smuggler Jacques Farchard (Alphonse Ethier). Concerned Read More

The Love Trap

Crew: Director

Actors: Neil Hamilton, Norman Trevor, Jocelyn Lee, Laura La Plante

Synopsis: Directed by William Wyler, The Love Trap centers around a chorus girl whose sudden job termination (on the day of her eviction, no less) leads her to a hasty decision -- she would attend a party and make money by whatever means necessary, however dubious those means may be. It isn't long before Read More

Thunderbolt

Crew: Director

Actors: George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall, Eugénie Besserer

Synopsis: Thunderbolt was Josef von Sternberg's first American talking picture. George Bancroft, a von Sternberg regular (despite frequents clashes between the two men), plays a death row inmate who may be on the eve of eternity, but who has still one more murder on his mind. He plans to kill the young Read More

The Shakedown

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Barbara Kent, George Kotsonaros, Wheeler Oakman, Jack Hanlon

Synopsis: Director William Wyler made the move up to talking pictures with this blend of action and comedy. Dave Roberts (James Murray is a professional boxer who is better at losing conveniently than in knocking out is opponents. Dave's less-than-happy life on the margins begins to change when he meets and Read More

Evidence

Crew: Director

Actors: Pauline Frederick, William Courtenay, Conway Tearle, Lowell Sherman, Alec B. Francis

Synopsis: A woman finds herself a victim of love in this drama. Her trouble begins when her husband falsely accuses her of having an affair. He divorces her and tells her that she can never see her son again. Six long years pass. Her son sees her in a park and takes her home. Her husband immediately tosses Read More

Anybody Here Seen Kelly?

Crew: Director

Thunder Riders

Crew: Director

Actors: Ted Wells, Gilbert "Pee Wee" Holmes, Dick L'Estrange, Bill Dyer, Julia Griffith

Synopsis: Directed by a very young William Wyler, this fanciful Ted Wells Western from the assembly-lines at Universal reads like a Hoot Gibson reject. Wells plays Jack Duncan, a ranch hand planning to give his new, female employer Betty Barton (Charlotte Stevens), a welcoming reception she won't soon Read More

The Two Fister

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A very young William Wyler directed this two-reel "Northwestern" starring tight-lipped Edmund Cobb as Field, a Northwest Mounted police officer assigned to catch a gang of murderous thugs. Unbeknownst to Field, the gang is lead by one Jackson Rasker (Norbert Myles), who has befriended Dumont Read More

Shooting Straight

Crew: Director

Actors: Ted Wells

Synopsis: Straight Shootin' is a rubber stamp Universal western vehicle for second-string cowboy hero Ted Wells. The villains kidnap a grizzled old prospector, threatening to starve him to death unless he reveals the whereabouts of his gold mine. The old man's far-from-loyal partner locates the mine on Read More

Daze of the West

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Young up-and-coming director William Wyler permitted himself to strut his stuff onscreen as well in this comedy two-reeler produced by Universal. A lively look at Western filmmaking, Daze of the West featured two-reel Western star Fred Gilman as a two-reel Western star, with Vin Moore as the Read More

The Haunted Homestead

Crew: Director

Kelcy Gets His Man

Crew: Director

Desert Dust

Crew: Director

Actors: Ted Wells, Lotus Thompson, Bruce Gordon

Synopsis: German-born William Wyler began his long, eventful directorial career helming Fred Gilman Western 2-reelers at Universal. Graduating to feature Westerns, Wyler directed both Fred Humes and Ted Wells. Desert Dust was the second of three Wells Westerns for Wyler, a breezy oater about a reform-school Read More

Hard Fists

Crew: Director

Actors: Art Acord, Louise Lorraine, Lee Holmes, Albert J. Smith

Synopsis: Hard-drinking silent screen hero Art Acord starred opposite his then-wife Louise Lorraine in this Universal oater directed by a young William Wyler. The story is something about a fake army colonel (Albert J. Smith) who blackmails Acord into doing his bidding, including smearing a rancher and his Read More

Gun Justice

Crew: Director

Border Cavalier

Crew: Director

Actors: Fred Humes, Joyce Compton

Synopsis: In this typical silent Universal "Blue Streak Western," a couple of crooked real estate speculators (Boris Bullock and Captain C.E. Anderson) conspire to acquire the potentially valuable Lawton ranch by less than savory means. Visiting the ranch, the smooth Bullock falls for the rancher's pretty Read More

Blazing Days

Crew: Director

Actors: Fred Humes, Ena Gregory

Synopsis: William Wyler, a distant relative of Universal's founder Carl Laemmle, directed this routine western about a cowboy, "Smilin'" Sam (Fred Humes), who mistakes lovely Milly (Ena Gregory) and her brother (Churchill Ross) for a couple of outlaws. Everything is quickly sorted out, however, and Humes Read More

Lazy Lightning

Crew: Director

Actors: Bobby Gordon, Fay Wray, Arthur Morrison, Vin Moore

Synopsis: William Wyler directed this fairly good Art Acord vehicle that also featured a very young Fay Wray in the female lead. Cowboy Lance Lighton (Acord) is known as "Lazy Lightning" because he's capable of riding like the wind but chooses not to. Lance is snapped out of his lethargy when little Dickie Read More

The Fire Barrier

Crew: Director

The Horse Trader

Crew: Director

The Gunless Bad Man

Crew: Director

Stolen Ranch

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Returning home from the Great War, "Breezy" Hart (Fred Humes) and his shell-shocked buddy Frank Wilcox (Ralph McCullough) discover the Wilcox property in the hands of evil Sam Hardy (William Norton Bailey). Frank, who is the rightful heir to the ranch, goes into hiding, while "Breezy" takes a job Read More

Ridin' for Love

Crew: Director

The Pinnacle Rider

Crew: Director

Martin of the Mounted

Crew: Director

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, Betty Bronson, Claire McDowell, Kathleen Key, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: The advertising tag "four years in the making" is usually so much press-agent puffery. In the case of the 1926 silent version of Ben Hur, it was the unvarnished truth--and the filmmakers had the scars to prove it. The story behind the film is now part of Hollywood folklore: the cast and production Read More

Crook Buster

Crew: Director