All All. Sign In. Greatest Directors. List activity. William Wyler. William Wyler was an American filmmaker who, at the time of his death in , was considered by his peers as second only to John Ford as a master craftsman of cinema. His directorial career spanned 45 years, from silent pictures to the cultural revolution of the s.
His Swiss-born father, Leopold, started as a traveling salesman but later became a thriving haberdasher in Mulhouse. Melanie Wyler often took him and his older brother Robert to concerts, opera, and the theatre, as well as the early cinema. Sometimes at home his family and their friends would stage amateur theatricals for personal enjoyment. He used his family connections to establish himself in the film industry. Upon being offered a job by his mother's first cousin, Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle , Wyler emigrated to the US in at the age of After starting in Universal's New York offices as an errand boy, he moved his way up through the organization, ending up in the California operation in Wyler was given the opportunity to direct in July , with the two-reel western The Crook Buster It was on this film that he was first credited as William Wyler, though he never officially changed his name and would be known as "Willi" all his life.
For almost five years he performed his apprenticeship in Universal's "B" unit, turning out a score of low-budget silent westerns. In he made his first "A" picture, Hell's Heroes , Universal's first all-sound movie shot outside a studio. The western, the first version of the "Three Godfathers" story, was a commercial and critical success. The initial years of the Great Depression brought hard times for the film industry, and Universal went into receivership in , partially due to financial troubles brought about by rampant nepotism and the runaway production costs rung up by producer Carl Laemmle Jr.
There were 70 Laemmle family members on the Universal payroll at one point, including Wyler. In "Uncle" Carl was forced to sell the studio he had created in with the merger of his Independent Motion Picture Co. Both films were produced by his cousin, "Junior" Laemmle.
Emancipated from the Laemmle family, Wyler subsequently established himself as a major director in the mids, when he began directing films for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. During this key period, he alternated between adaptations of famous plays and filming versions of classic novels. Willi would soon find his freedom fettered by the man with the fabled "Goldwyn touch," which entailed bullying his directors to recast, rewrite and re-cut their films, and sometimes even replacing them during shooting.
