Madsen, Axel. William Wyler: The Authorized Biography. 1973. Open Road, 2015.
Axel’s Madsen’s biography of the prolific film director William Wyler brags in its subtitle that it is authorized. But I am not sure what that means in this case. Usually, and authorized biography means that the author is given long-form interviews with his living subject and access to otherwise restricted documents. If Madsen was given such access, he does not often cite it in his notes, nor is there the usual introduction or afterword to explain what access he had and did not have. Wyler, who directed such diverse films as Roman Holiday, Ben Hur, Funny Girl, and The Liberation of LB Jones, deserves better. One would like, for example, to know more about his interaction on Roman Holiday with blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. One would also like to know what he and Gregory Peck fought about on the set of The Big Country and why neither one of that film’s lead actresses were happy. One of the common failings of “authorized” biographies is that they are often reticent about the failings of their subjects, and that seems to be the case here. We know from other sources that Wyler was an inveterate tinkerer with his scripts, although he only received three writing credits. One would certainly like to know more about his writing contributions. The best chapter in the book is the one on Ben Hur, but even there, the source cited most often is Charlton Heston, who took notes during the production. Sadly, almost 40 years after Wyler’s death, it is too late to get much more first-hand information about his career, which deserves to be scrutinized as fully as those of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. ( )