William A. Wellman

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While in San Diego, Wellman flew to Hollywood for the weekends in his Spad fighter, using Douglas Fairbanks' polo field in Bel Air as a landing strip. Fairbanks was fascinated with the true-life adventures of "Wild Bill" and promised to recommend him for a job in the movie business; he was responsible for Wellman being cast in the juvenile lead of The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919). Wellman was hired for the role of a young officer in Evangeline (1919), but he was fired for slapping Miriam Cooper, the film's star and also the wife of the production’s director, Raoul Walsh.

Wellman hated being an actor, thinking it an "unmanly" profession, and was miserable watching himself on screen while learning the craft. He soon switched to working behind the camera, aiming to be a director, and progressed up the line as "a messenger boy, as an assistant cutter, an assistant property man, a property man, an assistant director, second unit director and eventually...director." His first assignment as an assistant director for Bernie Durning provided him with a work ethic that he adopted for future film work. One strict rule that Durning enforced was no fraternization with screen femme fatales, which almost immediately Wellman broke, leading to a confrontation and a thrashing from the director. Despite his transgression, both men became lifelong friends, and Wellman steadily progressed to more difficult first unit assignments.

Wellman made his uncredited directorial debut in 1920 at Fox with The Twins of Suffering Creek. The first films he was credited with directing were The Man Who Won and Second Hand Love, released on the same day in 1923. After directing a dozen low-budget 'horse opera' films, Wellman was hired by Paramount in 1927 to direct Wings, a major war drama dealing with fighter pilots during World War I that was highlighted by air combat and flight sequences. The film culminates with the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel. In the 1st Academy Awards it was one of two films to win Best Picture (the other was Sunrise), although, due to tensions within the studio regarding time and budget overages, Wellman wasn't invited to the event.

Wellman's other films include The Public Enemy (1931), the first version of A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Beau Geste (1939) starring Gary Cooper, Thunder Birds (1942), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Lady of Burlesque (1943), The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Battleground (1949) and two films starring and co-produced by John Wayne, Island in the Sky (1953) and The High and the Mighty (1954).

While he was primarily a director, Wellman also produced 10 films, one of them uncredited, all of which he also directed. His last film was Lafayette Escadrille (1958), which he produced, directed, wrote the story for and narrated. He wrote the screenplay for two other films that he directed, and one film that he did not direct: 1936's The Last Gangster. Wellman wrote the story for A Star Is Born and (with Robert Carson) received the Academy Award for Best Story. Wellman is credited for the story in the remakes released in 1954, 1976, and 2018. Wellman's work was influenced by his good friend and fellow film director Howard Hawks, with whom he rode motorcycles together in a group called the Moraga Spit and Polish Club.

Wellman reportedly worked fast, usually satisfied with a shot after one or two takes. Despite his reputation for not coddling his leading men and women, he coaxed Oscar-nominated performances from seven actors: Fredric March and Janet Gaynor (A Star Is Born), Brian Donlevy (Beau Geste), Robert Mitchum (The Story of G.I. Joe), James Whitmore (Battleground), and Jan Sterling and Claire Trevor (The High and Mighty). Regarding actors, Wellman in a 1952 interview stated, "Movie stardom isn't about acting ability, it's personality and temperament". He then added, "I once directed Clara Bow. She was mad and crazy but what a personality!"

Wings led to several firsts in filmmaking including newly invented camera mounts that could be secured to plane fuselages and motor-driven cameras to shoot actors while flying as the cameramen ducked out of frame in their cockpits. Star Richard Arlen had some flying experience but co-star Buddy Rogers had to learn to fly for the film, as stunt pilots could not be used during close-up shots. Towers up to 100 feet were used to shoot low-flying planes and battle action on the ground.

During the filming of Beggars of Life, a silent film starring Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks, sound was added to Beery's introductory scene at the behest of Paramount Studio. Wellman reportedly hung a microphone from a broom so Beery could walk and talk within the scene, avoiding the static shot required for early sound shoots. During the filming of Chinatown Nights (1929), he sat under the camera on a dolly with the mic between his legs, essentially inventing a shotgun mic.

Wellman won a single Academy Award, for the story of A Star Is Born. He was nominated as best director three times: for A Star Is Born, Battleground and The High and Mighty, for which he was also nominated by the Directors Guild of America as best director. In 1973, the DGA honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Copies of both Wings and The Story of G.I. Joe are preserved in the Academy Film Archive. Wellman also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6125 Hollywood Blvd.

Career assessments

Decades after Wellman's death, William Jr. wrote two biographies about his father, The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture (2006) and Wild Bill Wellman—Hollywood Rebel (2015). Fellow filmmakers have also examined Wellman's career. Richard Schickel in 1973 devoted an episode of his PBS series The Men Who Made the Movies to Wellman, and in 1996, Todd Robinson made the feature-length documentary Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick.

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