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William Wyler Directs Bette Davis in "Jezebel"
From: Columbia University
| By:
Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
A master craftsman and a key player in Hollywood's golden age, William Wyler (1902-81) was best known for his meticulous directing style. In this excerpt from a 1972 interview conducted by Charles Higham, of Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Wyler talks about his work on the film Jezebel (1938), and about directing Bette Davis. |
Question: Could you begin by telling me about the origins of the film Jezebel? How did that come about? |
William Wyler talks about his behind-the-scenes relationship with Bette Davis in Jezebel. |
William Wyler: Well, as far as I'm concerned, I was simply asked by Warner Bros.--Hal Wallis, rather, who was in charge of the studio at the time. The script was submitted to me, and it was already a finished script. I was asked to direct the film, which I read and liked. At the time, Bette Davis was one of the biggest stars in the business, and it was flattering to receive an offer to direct her in a film. But that wasn't enough. I mean, if I hadn't liked the story, I wouldn't have done it. |
But it was an interesting story. It was based on a play that was a failure in New York, but I happened to have seen it one of the few nights that it played. And it seemed to me like they had done a very good job on the script. I forget the man who wrote the script. We had a few conferences about it. He knew his subject very well, and, of course, I agreed to do the film. |
So I was not in on the purchase of the book by Warner and so on. You know, that was all done before I came into it. It was submitted to me as a film with Bette Davis, and I was glad to accept it. |
Q: Did you find Miss Davis easy to work with at first, on the first days of working with her? |
Wyler: Well, now, when you use the word "easy," I would say no, not easy, but not difficult, either. I think these are the wrong words. I don't think any star or any prominent person or anybody who values his work is easy. I'm not easy, either. |
I think one of the reasons we got on so well is that both of us wanted the best results, and Miss Davis, she's a hard worker, same as I was, and very demanding, most of all from herself. She was tireless, and people like that are not easy in the sense that many people think easy would go along with anything. I mean, if you gave her the wrong direction or did proceed badly, you would hear from her. And the same thing with me, too. I'm not easy, in that sense. |
So we got along awfully well, although in the beginning both of us, I suppose, were very guarded towards each other. I was still young and sort of in the beginning of my--well, it was one of the first important pictures for me. So there was also a background--I almost forget, there was a background to it, to our relationship. |
Several years before, quite a few years before, before she became a star, she was in stock at Universal, and I was a young--I was just beginning to direct films. And she came up for a part in a picture I was to do, and I turned her down and took another girl. It was one of my big mistakes. I took a girl named Helen Chandler, who eventually was certainly by far not as good as Bette, but at that time she was more experienced and better-known, and since I was just beginning to make films myself, I chose her. Bette threw it up to me many times, and she claimed that I had made some disparaging remarks about her at that time, which I don't remember but perhaps--well, she said I said something to somebody and she happened to overhear it, to the effect that she was not attractive enough or something of the sort. Of course, by this time she was a big star and she didn't care about it anymore, but she let me know that she hadn't forgotten. |
Q: Did she differ with you at all on the interpretation of the role of Jezebel? |
Wyler: No. Well, not basically, not between her and me, but I do remember an incident early in the film in which she--I believe a scene with Henry Fonda--in which she was sort of raising hell with him, and she was doing it in the normal way, the scenes like that she usually played. And I wanted to experiment with something. It seemed to me that I asked her to do the scene smiling, and she first didn't understand. I said, "Well, try it once." Well, she tried it, and the scene came off very well. It was a little less ordinary than that type of scene played, and just as bitchy, in fact a little more, where she was giving him hell but with a smile on her face, and rather than in an aggressive voice, with kind of a sweet voice. Well, after we did it, she liked it. |
Now, it was during the lunch hour there, or sometime during that day, Jack Warner called me and asked me to come and see him. And he said to me, "Now, look, you know"--he was very nice, very pleasant--"look, I mean, we're delighted to have you do this picture for us here," and so on, "but I just want to call your attention to one thing. We have this girl, Bette Davis, she's a big star, she's making lots of money for us, and she's got a style which the public likes, she plays hard and tough," and so on, "and don't try to change her." |
I said, "Well, I wasn't trying to change her." |
He says, "She's fine. We don't want to change her. We want to leave her just the way she is." |
I said, "I'm not changing her, really. I'm not changing the character. I'm just making it a little more subtle, and in fact, as I said before, she's just as bitchy, in fact, a little more so the way I'm doing the scene." |
Well, anyway, he said, "Keep that in mind. Don't try to change the girl, you know." |
I said, "Fine. Thank you." Well, anyway, I didn't change the girl, you know, but this was sort of an interesting sidelight on her characterization. I think that Bette herself liked the idea of not playing it quite so--just like villainously, quite so aggressively. And we got along famously. |
It was a wonderful relationship we had for two pictures. I mean, a star-director relationship is terribly important in the making of a film, because, after all, it's an intimate relationship. You discuss innermost feelings of the character involved, and for that you have to understand one another and see things along the same lines. |
I don't believe that I'm in any way autocratic--you know, demand this or that interpretation. I don't consider myself a Svengali with the actors in my hands. I don't believe in that at all. I think it's a cooperative effort, and I want the actors--in fact, I demand they do their own thinking. And many times Bette would come up with a slightly different interpretation of a scene than I had in mind, and many times she would be right. |
In other words, you don't want strict obedience, you know. Well, you do want it in a case of completely different opinions, you know, but you don't want strict obedience. You want cooperation. You want a meeting of the minds. And in that respect, we got along very well. |
Q: It's very interesting that in the pictures that you've done with her she's more subdued. She's more naturalistic than in other directors' films. |
Wyler: Yes, well, I think this is one of the things like the example of the scene I told you where she had been used. She had had a series of successful films in which she came on very strong. And in some instances, for some scenes, it's fine, and for some scenes I thought it could be a little more subtle. And the strengths would be there all the same. I think she recognized that and appreciated that. |
Q: Do you think that her tendency in other films to play it very large is due to a certain insecurity? |
Wyler: No, no. It's not insecurity, not in her case. It's the nature of filmmaking, you see. For someone like her, she's a workhorse. She loves to work, and she loves to act. And because everything is done in little bits, you know, she wants to come in the morning and do her bit of acting that day. And some scenes don't require any acting--it's just meaningless, you know. |
Somebody can come in, say, "Good morning, how are you?" and so on, and if you come on very strong doing that, you look for hidden meanings and there aren't any. So occasionally you have to tell--particularly good actors--you have to tell them, "Look, this is not important. This is just taking it easy. And when we get to an important scene, yes, of course." |
This happens with some of the greatest actors. It's bound to happen in the making of a film where you do little bit by little bit, you know, because she wants to give her best every day, and her best may be too much. It may be not what you want. So you used to have signals, just have a little signal--just do this, you know. And, yes, of course, she would calm down and play softly, quietly, you know. But it's only natural for an actor or an actress to do that. So some directors don't bother with this sort of thing. You let an actor--well, I think it's the job of the director to remind the actor when and where he should give his most or give a little less. |
Q: Do you find that she's a cooperative actress in terms of the rest of the cast, that she's a good team actor? |
Wyler: Oh, yes. Well, in that regard, she's absolutely exemplary. I mean, she would never let her stand-in--you know, she would always be there to respond to another actor's close-up or something of the sort where sometimes it's become a habit of laziness, you know, where stars would go home, and you'd do close-ups of the people, and the script girl or the stand-in would read her lines. I mean, you never had to contend with that, because that would affect the performance of the other actor. In fact, I remember instances when, you know, you try to make the star come, especially in a picture like that, come and get up at five o'clock in the morning, to get the hair done, the makeup and everything. By nine o'clock they're all ready. Later in the afternoon, they get exhausted, they get tired, and you try to make it easy and dismiss her a little sooner if you can. I did this a few times with her, try to let her go early because she's had a hard, long day. Well, I remember on a few occasions, she would be disappointed. She'd say, "What's the matter, don't you want me around anymore?" |
I said, "No, I try to make it a little easier for you." Well, she would rush off into her dressing room, change clothes, get into her slacks, and she'd be right back in two minutes, be right there beside me while I was doing other scenes, sometimes scenes in which she wasn't even involved, but she'd be there and stay there until the day's work was done. |
Wyler: I think she sort of wanted to watch me, too, to see that I would do the right thing. |
Q: Did she get along well with Margaret Lindsay? |
Wyler: As far as I could see, yes. There were some rumors and stories at the time, because Margaret Lindsay was playing this rival of hers in the story, and I don't know whether it was publicity to make the rivalry also between them personally. I was not aware of anything like that, but it's possible. Women in a scene like that and under those conditions, there's certain rivalry between them. It's quite natural, and especially if that rivalry exists in the story, it's fine that they should have it personally also. |
Q: Did you rehearse a great deal? |
Wyler: Yes, yes, I always do. I rehearse. I believe that professionals need and want rehearsal, because filmmaking, after all, is a highly technical business, you know. You cannot get around the technique. You have to have it there. People have to be in the right place. The lights have to be right, the microphone, everything, cameras. There is so much technique that the actors have to become used to the technique and forget it. And in order to forget it, they have to rehearse it, you know, and get that part out of their minds. |
They have to forget that there's a camera, there's lights, there's 100 people standing around watching you. And this doesn't come like that. I think rehearsals among professionals are important. That doesn't mean that if you pick out a kid off the street to try to do a scene with him, you know, you can overrehearse people to the point where they get very mechanical, you know, and that, too, is bad. I've been accused many times of shooting scenes too many times over and over. And it's true that in some cases I do until I get it the way I want it. But there's always a purpose behind it and a reason for doing it over. But as I say, you can do too much or too little of rehearsing, depending on the receptiveness of the actors, depending on how they feel and react, and on the techniques surrounding it. |
Q: Did you like working with Ernie Heller? |
Wyler: Oh, yes, he was an excellent cameraman. He, of course, was under contract to Warner Bros. He did most of the Bette Davis films. He photographed her very well, and he photographed the film very well. He did a very good job of photography. |
Q: In a case where you have a cameraman, do you control the lighting yourself, or do you leave the lighting to the cameraman? |
Wyler: No, I leave the lighting to the cameraman--we have to understand that the mood that I want the lighting to be in, that has to be understood between us. But then, beyond that, of course, I often go around turning out lights when I think there's too many of them, or saying, "Look, you know, I think we've got too much here. What do you think?" But I don't try to take over the lighting, because I don't know enough about it technically, but I can see. |
We agree on the mood of the scene and the type. You know, we discuss the lighting and the photography in general terms of the whole film, and then sequence by sequence, and scene by scene. And once it's in the mood that I want it to be, then beyond that he has freedom to operate. You know, I don't try to light the scene for him, no. |
Q: Were you disappointed that the film wasn't made in color? Because I know that an absolutely key dramatic point was the entry of Jezebel into the ball in a scarlet dress. |
Q: Now, did you try hard to get color for it? |
Wyler: No. There were very few films made in color at that time, and the color at that time was not natural. I was not eager to do films in color, because the color was very artificial in those days. I thought, you know, that that particular scene would be striking in color, and would, of course, be much more effective, but I think we got around that. I mean, we got the idea. The idea came across very well, although the dress didn't look--we tried to find--we tested the dress to try to give it a shade that was sort of shiny, but it was bound to come out dark. I think the scene got over very well, all the same. |
Q: Did Jack Warner give you complete freedom apart from this small objection, which you settled? |
Wyler: Yes, well, I never heard from him after that. Yes, I had freedom. I had no problems at all with either Jack Warner or Hal Wallis or anybody. They seemed to be satisfied. I think we went over the schedule by a few days or so, and at the very end of the film, when we did those night scenes, I think I was told once, "This is the last night. I've got to finish tonight. There will be no more after that." And it didn't present any problem to me. I did finish that night. But I guess they were afraid that I would get involved too much with the--it was when the wagons were taking the yellow-fever victims. They were taking them off to an island somewhere, and they were parading through the streets. And they didn't want me to go on shooting that. They thought I'd probably fall in love with that sequence and go on shooting it for days or nights. But that wasn't necessary. |
Q: Is there any truth in the belief that the film was designed to rival the projected Gone With the Wind? |
Wyler: Yes, I'd heard some talk about that. I don't think that was the intention. It was never in my mind. It was an entirely different sort of story, although there were similarities in the character of Jezebel and the character of Scarlett in so far as they were both attractive Southern belles, very headstrong, and that their headstrongness sort of did them in in the end. |
There was that similarity, and since Gone With the Wind was very much talked about, was the big novel of the day, there were bound to be these rumors. But I don't think it was the intention of Warner's to undercut Gone With the Wind in any way. |
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