LEONARD MALTIN IN FOCUS — 1996

Of the many examples of hyperbole put forward in Hollywood, one of my favorite is the abuse of the word "veteran."  A few years ago I received a press release from the American

William "Wild Bill" Wellman, seated in his director's chair, confers with Janet Blair, Glenn Ford, and technical adviser Col. C. A. Shoop while filming Gallant Journey (1946), the story of America's first aeronaut.

Film Institute announcing a master class with "veteran film director" Martha Coolidge.  Unless my memory fails me, the woman who made Valley Girl and Rambling Rose started out in the early 1980s.  Veteran?

Let's talk about a living embodiment of the term:  William A. Wellman, subject of the new documentary William Wellman: Hollywood Maverick, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and then screened last week at the Directors Guild in Hollywood.  Wellman made his first movie in 1926, at the height of the silent-film era, and shot his last feature film more than thirty years later!  Because of this, the colleagues interviewed for this documentary range from Buddy Rogers (star of Wellman's signature classic, the 1927 Wings) and Robert Mitchum (of 1945's The Story of G.I. Joe and 1954's Track of the Cat) to Clint Eastwood (featured in 1958's Lafayette Escadrille) and James Garner (star of 1958's Darby's Rangers).  Even Robert Redford is seen on-camera; he was a pal of Billy Wellman's when both of them were neophyte actors in the late 50s and early 60s. 

It was Billy—more properly, William Wellman, Jr.—who conceived of this documentary tribute to his father and spent years trying to put it together.  At the DGA screening he spoke of the countless turndowns he received, until Michael Wayne (son of John, who employed the senior Wellman in the 1950s) finally agreed to back the project. 

Why is it that movie and television executives feel that nobody wants to know about great filmmakers, past and present?  Why wouldn't it be compelling to hear about the man who spat in producer's faces, raised hell, and made such memorable movies as The Public Enemy, the original A Star is Born, The Ox-Bow Incident, Battleground, and The High and the Mighty?  For years, virtually the only documentaries about American film history were made by British television.  I'm happy to report that the Wellman film will be seen on TCM and TNT, the Turner networks, later this year.

What makes this documentary special is that it offers as much a personal profile as a career summary.  You come away feeling as though you know something of the man as well as the moviemaker, and that's unusual. 

Wellman wasn't called Wild Bill for nothing.  His temper was the stuff of legend, and plenty of people in the documentary tell hair-raising stories about it (including young Bill, who remembers his father—in his presence—stalking up to studio chief Jack Warner and telling him he'd wipe the floor with him if he ever caught him off-duty, in a men's room.)  But he was also a devoted family man, father of seven children, and a true independent spirit, who refused to be shackled by long-term studio contracts or pin-headed producers.  He was his own man, and for that he paid a price.  But even the moguls he derided knew what a talent he was, and endured his flamboyant behavior when they felt he was the right man for a particular picture.

In conjunction with this documentary, UCLA sponsored a series of Wellman films, one of which I simply had to see last week:  Young Eagles (1930).  One of two films regarded as "cheaters" that played off the success of Wings, the first film to win a Best Picture Academy Award, this film was certainly the rarest in the UCLA program.  Although I'd heard that it relied on stock footage from Wings' famous aerial sequences, that turned out to be something of an exaggeration.  There was only one segment that lifted actual footage from Wings.  The other airborne material was newly shot—in the earliest days of sound—and instead of taking place over the puffy-clouded skies of Texas, were filmed instead over what looks like the San Fernando Valley, with dramatic mountains serving as backdrop for a crystal-clear sky.  As in Wings, Wellman mounted his camera in the front of the biplanes, looking back at his actors in their cockpits for unparalleled realism.

       What's more, this unsung director made incredible use of sound, at a time when the cliche history books tell us that cameras were locked in place and microphones hidden in floral arrangements.  Not so for Wellman:  his camera dollied both inside and out, and he even staged one party scene with live singing and piano playing in the background as Buddy Rogers and Jean Arthur had a tete-a-tete in an adjoining room.  (No sophisticated mixing boards back then; this sound collage was "mixed" live on the stage as it was happening.)

That's why I get so excited when I see a rare old film and learn something new.  Young Eagles is, storywise, pretty dumb, but in terms of its filmmaking techniques is downright astonishing at times.  And it lends credence to the new documentary's assertion that Wellman is a much underrated man in the annals of Hollywood history.  Fortunately, most of his films survive and can help rebuild that reputation.

(Since this column was written, several good things have happened:  Wellman’s outstanding film The Story of G.I. Joe has been rescued from limbo and released on video, and the documentary Hollywood  Maverick has also been made available.  For information on the latter, go to www.wildbillfilms.com. )