"Affectionate look at the Maverick 'Wild Bill'"
By KENNETH TURAN - TIMES FILM CRITIC
Saturday, May 11, 1996

In a world entranced with the output of failed auteur Ed Wood, it's not surprising that the films of a complete professional like William Wellman find themselves farther from the limelight. But for those who knew and worked with him, the man himself is harder to forget.
Even now, nearly 40 years after Wellman's last film, people like Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford can do little more than shake their heads in awed memory of how cantankerous an individual he was. Even Nancy Reagan, not exactly a pushover, respectfully recalls that the man "could be very intimidating."
These tales and more are the heart of "Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick," written and directed by Todd Robinson and playing at the Nuart, an affectionate tribute of the "print the legend" variety to an unjustly neglected figure from the movies' golden age. Combining interview footage with clips from some of Wellman's 76 features, "Wild Bill," narrated by Alec Baldwin, brings this maverick director into deserved focus again.
On one level, Wellman's pugnacity, his legendary explosive temper, made him an unlikely candidate for success in the studio system. Here, after all, was someone who delivered a load of horse manure to a Paramount executive's office with the message, "That's what I think of your lousy script," and once told Jack Warner: "If I ever catch you in the men's room, I'm going to put you in the hospital for six weeks."
*
Yet his speed, decisiveness and skill made Wellman a valued commodity. One of the generation of directors who put the experiences of a rugged life into his work, Wellman made movies that earned 32 Oscar nominations, including four best picture nods and three for best director for himself.
Early photographs show a Wellman who was ferocious almost from birth. The key experience in his life came at age 19 when he became a pilot in the French army's Lafayette Flying Corps, active in combat before America's official entry into World War I.
Wellman got his "Wild Bill" nickname during this time, and nearly lost his life in a wreck. Aviation continued to be critical to his life: He got his first job in Hollywood after landing his plane on the lawn of Pickfair and asking Douglas Fairbanks, whom he'd met years earlier, to help him out.
And his initial triumph, good enough to win the first best picture Oscar, was "Wings," the 1927 story of World War I aviators that benefited from Wellman's stubbornness as well as his experience. He held up shooting the film's landmark aerial sequences for a month until the skies offered up precisely the kind of cloud formations he had in mind.
For all his tough-guy exterior, emotion of any type did not trouble Wellman. "Wings" features a kiss on the mouth between co-stars Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen that celebrated the depth of their friendship, and James Cagney's furious squashing of a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in "Public Enemy" became perhaps the best-known moment of the '30s.
*
Wellman also delighted in tackling tough subjects in his films. His examination of mob justice in "The Ox-Bow Incident" caused a stir in its time. Still quite impressive today are a pair of socially conscious dramas he did in the 1930s, "Wild Boys of the Road" (which starred his wife, Dorothy Coonan) and "Heroes for Sale." ("Westward the Women," one of Wellman's least-seen films, will be screened at the Nuart for one performance only, May 19 at noon.)
A cranky iconoclast to the end, Wellman insisted, "I'm not retiring, I'm quitting," when his most personal project, "Lafayette Escadrille," proved to be his final film. His son William Wellman Jr., "Wild Bill's" executive producer, says his father once told him, "I've lived the life of 100 men." This warm and engaging film shows what he meant.

Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick, 1996. Unrated. A Wild Bill Pictures production. Writer-director Todd Robinson. Producer Ken Carlson. Executive producer William Wellman Jr. Cinematographer Theodore Angell, Christian Sebaldt. Editor Leslie Jones. Music David Bell. Narrator Alec Baldwin. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

"Quick: Name a Film by Wellman"
Television Review – By: Caryn James

Ask anyone except the most fanatical movie buff to name a William Wellman film, and you’re likely to get a blank look, or at best confusion with William Wyler ("Wuthering Heights") or Billy Wilder ("Sunset Boulevard"). But start to name some Wellman movies, and the response is more likely to be, " He did that?" It was Wellman who directed James Cagney as he smashed a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face in "The Public Enemy" and Wellman who directed Carole Lombard in "Nothing Sacred", one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time.

He directed "Beau Geste", with Gary Cooper, and the original "A Star Is Born" And early in his career, he coreographed a sky full of planes in the silent movie "Wings", winner of the first Academy Award for Best Picture ever given out. So why is his profile so low?

The title of "Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick", an absorbing look at his life and career, suggests one reason. Though Wellman flourished under the Hollywood studio system, he so antagonized studios with his arrogance and independence that Paramount did not invite him to the premiere of "Wings" or the the Oscar ceremony. Wellman once did what a lot of people undoubtedly wanted to do, and got into a fistfight with Darryl F. Zanuck, the producer.

And despite the range in his career, Wellman became best known as the macho director of war movies like "The Story of G.I. Joe", films that appeal to a narrower taste.

"Wild Bill", narrated by Alec Baldwin, restores a sense of balance, relying on a wealth of opinions from Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Martin Scorsese and many others. The film makes a case for a personal style that reflected Wellman’s personality: he was a cynical, uncompromising realist, yet sympathetic to his characters. "The Public Enemy" reveals Wellman at his best. As Mr. Scorsese points out, there is great invention in the early use of sound and emotional power when Cagney walks into a shootout. The camera watches him disappear into a building, then stays on the empty street as viewers hear shots and moans from inside. Then Cagney comes out, shot. "I ain’t so tough," he says, as he falls to the ground. "Wild Bill" never runs out of terrific clips like that.

Wellman’s son William Wellman Jr. created this documentary and fills in much about his father’s histroy. Born in 1896, Wellman grew up along with the movie industry. His son points out that he was nicknamed Wild Bill during World War I, when he was a fearless aviator with a French unit. He was shot down and seriously injured; next to that, dealing with Hollywood toughs was nothing. Because of his flying experience he got to direct "Wings," which cost a phenomenal $2 million back in 1927. His career ended in 1958, after the disappoinment of making "Lafayette Escadrille", an autobiographical story about his wartime experience. The studio meddled and insisted on a happy ending. Wellman shot the new ending, then stopped making movies, long before his death in 1975.

A career of 76 or so films is bound to be uneven, and "Wild Bill" sometimes goes overboard in its praise. All you have to do is glimpse Janet Gaynor gushing, "This is Mrs. Norman Maine" in "A Star Is Born" to see how Wellman sometimes let his actors emote too much. His western morality play, "The Ox-Bow Incident" with its conspicuously fake painted backdrops of the great outdoors, hasn’t aged well. But the documentary can be forgiven a few excesses. It’s sweet that "Wild Bill" reclaims credit for Wellman, but even better that it is a fascinating, revealing film in its own right.

Copyright New York Times

Remembering Wild Bill
John Hartl

William A. Wellman directed Wings, the 1927 aerial epic that won the first Academy Award for best picture of the year.

He won another Oscar for co-writing the first official version of A Star Is Born (1937) and he was nominated for directing A Star Is Born, Battleground (1949) and The High and the Mighty (1954). He made Carole Lombard's screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred (1937); the anti-lynching classic The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); and James Cagney's breakthrough picture, Public Enemy (1931).

Yet for all his achievements - not to mention his reputation as a stubborn, colorful hard-drinker who held frequent showdowns with studio bosses - he doesn't immediately spring to mind as one of the great American filmmakers.

By the time he retired in the late 1950s, his artistry had dimmed, largely due to the dull movies he was compelled to make (Darby's Rangers) and the compromises forced on the ones he chose to direct (Lafayette Escadrille).

When he died of leukemia in 1975, Andrew Sarris's influential book, "The American Cinema," listed him in a section devoted to directors who have "Less Than Meets the Eye." Sarris concluded that "with Wellman, crudity is too often mistaken for sincerity" and accused him of lacking a point of view: "With Wellman, as with so many other directors, objectivity is the last refuge of mediocrity."

Sarris has recanted a number of those judgments (also included under "Less Than Meets the Eye" were Billy Wilder, John Huston and William Wyler). Perhaps it's time to take another look at Wellman.

Todd Robinson's affectionate documentary, which was executive-produced by Wellman's son and first shown at the Sundance Film Festival along with a Wellman retrospective earlier this year, does an admirable job of suggesting what the man was like on and off the set.

Although he's been gone for more than two decades, a lot of people still remember him well, including his widow, Clint Eastwood, Darryl Hickman, Tab Hunter, Tom Laughlin, Robert Mitchum, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Robert Wise, Jane Wyman and Nancy Reagan (this could be the first film to bring Ronald Reagan's two wives together).

In addition to these interviews, Robinson does a skillful job of showcasing Wellman's films, sometimes weaving autobiographical elements into the clips. Scenes from the neglected, heartbreaking Depression saga, Wild Boys of the Road (1933), are presented to powerful effect. Track of the Cat (1954), filmed partly on Mount Rainier in strangely muted color and CinemaScope, looks like an avant-garde movie today.

A series of clips that demonstrate Wellman's fondness for shooting through foreground objects will strike some as a revelation, others as profoundly indulgent. In any event, it's a point that only a documentary as attentive and selective as this one could make.

If The High and the Mighty looks mighty silly today, and if Buffalo Bill (1944) really is the disgrace Wellman thought it was at the time, it's still instructive to see how they fit into the pattern of his career. Robinson's documentary doesn't shy away from his subject's eccentricities and imperfections, which are always presented as part and parcel of his maverick reputation.

Copyright Film.com