Wyler's Wiles

Movies are pre-eminently a director's medium, and of the Hollywood directors most actors would don a hair shirt to work for, William Wyler is near the top of the list. His own record as a director is unsurpassed: three Oscars (Mrs'. Miniver, Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur) plus eight Oscar nominations. But what impresses actors is not so much that his expertise ranges from costume epics to light comedy; it is that under his guidance no fewer than a dozen stars have won Oscars for themselves.* Not that working under Willie Wyler is easy. "I try to establish a rule," he says, "that there is only one prima donna on the set, and that's me."

Wyler gets results by demanding them--over and over and over again. Actors assigned to him describe the experience as "living in the torture chamber." Greer Garson tried to soften him up in advance by sending him a pair of velvet gloves. Bette Davis got so mad she walked off the set for a week. Olivia de Havilland all but heaved a suitcase at Wyler after he ordered the umpteenth take of the same scene; yet all these films were hits. "I've resisted the temptation of being a good fellow," says Wyler, 62. "I don't care what they think of me on the set; they'll love me at the premiere." And, almost universally, they do.

Rough Going. No exceptions are English Actor Terence Stamp, 25, and Actress Samantha Eggar, 25, the two-man cast of Wyler's latest Columbia film, The Collector. Wyler picked them after reading John Fowles's bestselling psychodrama, the story of a repressed lower-class bank clerk (and butterfly collector) who wins the football pool, buys a mansion, then kidnaps a pretty art student and keeps her in the basement for two months while he vainly tries to win her over and she as vainly tries to escape. "I found I couldn't put the book down," Wyler says. "And I'm a man who can put books down very easily. Still, for a film, it was a precarious undertaking--not only just two people but two unknowns."

Stamp, who had won plaudits for his role in Billy Budd, put Wyler to the test the first few days by walking through a retake. Wyler fixed him with an icy eye, said, "Of course, we will have to shoot that again," and Stamp settled down to deliver his best. Samantha was another story. Wyler had been smitten by her lustrous auburn hair and green eyes, even insisted on color to capture her English glow. But her experience went no further than dramatic school, some repertory Shakespeare, and small parts in a few films. The first weeks were rough going, and it looked as if Samantha would be dropped. "For a few days I thought of making things easy for myself," Wyler confesses. Instead, he decided to exert all his wiles on the young actress.

Trapped & Losing. "I wasn't allowed to leave the set during the day, not even for lunch," Samantha recalls. "On both Saturdays and Sundays I was obliged to rehearse from 11 in the morning to 7 at night, every weekend. It was murder. It was fantastic. I lived on my nerves." To coach Samantha, Wyler called in Character Actress Kathleen Freeman, who not only forced Samantha to struggle with the role, but hyped it up further with horror stories about a paranoid schizophrenic relative until Samantha was thoroughly psyched and having nightmares. The turning point came when Samantha was watching Stamp sing a merry-mad cockney song and, as she watched, a tear came slowly down her cheek. "We were both elated," Coach Freeman recalls. "That was what we both needed. She knew she was at last involved with the part."

Once in the role, Wyler never left her free; in 42 days of shooting in Hollywood, Samantha's only outing was a Dodgers-Giants baseball game. Wyler followed the unusual practice of shooting all the interiors first, and in sequence. "The intense growth she achieved was, jeepers, a tremendous leap," says Kathleen Freeman. "It was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life to watch a character being made at the same time an actress is reaching her own stature." Samantha remembers it otherwise: "I guess I was supposed to feel trapped, and I did. I lost about ten pounds. Wyler loved it. 'Aaah,' he said. 'You're wasting away.' "

Double Dip. Samantha's distress kept pace with her role; her shadows darkened as the heroine wasted away. Verisimilitude was everything. Wyler even insisted that the two nude scenes be played entirely in the buff, and one of them, a bathtub scene, was shot and reshot for five hours. For conventraised Samantha, it was this very embarrassment that gave veracity to her fumbling, desperate efforts to seduce her captor--which was precisely the effect Wyler wanted. "Looking back," Samantha admits, "I must say it made sense; it was valid."

Three weeks ago at the Cannes festival, The Collector made more than that. The jury decided to dip into one film for both Best Actor and Best Actress, awarded them to Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar. On the private-showing circuit in Hollywood, Samantha is being touted as having a rare combination of acting talent and physical beauty, and Wyler's wiles may have set up two more Oscar nominations. If so, that's perfectly fine by Willie Wyler. "I'm particularly pleased for this award for the two kids," he said serenely. "I prefer that to an award for me, because I consider this is the same thing."

* Among them: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Greer Garson, Fredric March, Teresa Wright, Fay Bainter, Walter Brennan, Burl Ives, Hugh Griffith, Audrey Hepburn, Charlton Heston.

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