A Familiar Subject

"The big difference between TV and movies lies in the audience's frame of mind," says Alsace-born William Wyler, 54, whose skilled directorial hand has made him one of Hollywood's top moviemakers. "With TV, you have all the disturbing elements of the home."

Producer-Director Wyler had good reason to draw a comparison. Rummaging through his musty attic of past hits (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday), he came across Somerset Maugham's durable old (1927) melodrama, The Letter, and last week dusted it off for the 21-inch screen. It was Wyler's first stab at TV, and the result was a slick, highly polished teledrama about a bored wife who riddles her lover with bullets and gets away with it.

The Letter originally starred Katharine Cornell on Broadway; Jeanne Eagels did it in the first movie (1929), and Bette Davis, with Wyler directing, in the second (1940). Wyler picked The Letter for his TV debut (on NBC's Producer's Showcase) because "in an unfamiliar medium I wanted a familiar subject." On a three-week schedule, he staged the entire production the first week, spent the other two on technique. "TV is so complex technically, it leaves little or no time for acting and directing." But by drawing on his broad movie experience, Wyler could see the whole of his 85-minute production as if he were "making only one take of a motion picture."

Fog-throated Siobhan (St. Joan) Mc-Kenna, in a blonde wig, played Leslie, the high-voltage heroine, through a sticky Malayan melee of passions. Stalking Maugham's female primeval like a white hunter was Wyler's inquisitive camera, peering through all the flora and fauna into the hurt eyes of the cuckolded husband (John Mills, making his American TV debut), or capturing the guilt written across the sallow face of the barrister (Michael Rennie) who helps Leslie beat the rap. With pace and polish, Wyler distilled all the steamy Maugham atmosphere and dry rot of colonial life, brought believability to some papier-mache archetypes. Oldtime Cinemactress Anna May Wong, as the blackmailing mistress of the murdered cad, peered with good effect through the inevitable beaded curtains.

For all its sudsy incidents, characters and lines ("You'd be attractive anywhere, but in this Godforsaken jungle, you're irresistible!"), The Letter was unusual adult entertainment. By letting the heroine get by with both murder and adultery, it did what the movies, according to the code, cannot do. NBC censors did pressure Wyler to "change a few 'hells' and 'My Gods'." The line, "A woman he had relations with," became "A woman with whom he had a relation." But Wyler refused to tamper with key bits, viz., "He tried to rape me so I shot him." Snorted he: "What are you going to say-'He tried to make love to me so I killed him'? Big laugh."

As Wyler's first TV venture, The Letter also may well be his last. Though an "exciting one-shot experiment," he found himself "out of control" in the medium. "I don't want to be in the lap of the gods; I want the gods to be in my lap." Wyler also observes of TV: "One night, and it's gone. On the other hand, a movie is always there. It goes all over the world, and people see it when they feel like it."

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