William Wyler Won 3 Oscars For Dramas. Tried Comedy Once. How To Steal A Million Bombed

William Wyler Won 3 Oscars For Dramas. Tried Comedy Once. How To Steal A Million Bombed 

July 13th, 1966, Radio City Music Hall, New York. The premiere of How to Steal a Million, a sophisticated heist comedy starring Audrey Heppern and Peter Oul. Directed by William Wiler. William Wiler, threetime Academy Award winner. The man behind Benur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs.

 Minver, one of Hollywood’s most respected directors, a master of serious, prestigious drama. But tonight’s premiere is different. This isn’t a Wiler drama. It’s a comedy. His first and only attempt at light entertainment in a career spanning four decades. The reviews are savage. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther calls the plot preposterous.

Life magazine dismisses it as overdressed and underfunn. The film needed to earn $12 million to break even. It makes $10.45 million, a $1.55 million loss. For William Wiler, it’s a career catastrophe. Proof that even the greatest directors can fail spectacularly when they venture outside their expertise. Evidence that mastering drama doesn’t guarantee success in comedy.

This is the story of how one of Hollywood’s most celebrated filmmakers destroyed his reputation with a single misguided project. How threetime Oscar winner William Wiler learned that comedy isn’t just drama [music] with laughs. How How to Steal a Million became the most expensive lesson in genre mismatch in cinema history.

The story of what happens when legendary directors try to be something they’re not. To understand why How to Steal a Million was such a disaster, you need to understand what William Wiler had achieved before 1966. He wasn’t just another Hollywood director. He was royalty. The king of prestige drama, the man studios called when they wanted awards, respectability, and critical acclaim.

Born in France in 1902, Wiler arrived in Hollywood in 1920. Started as an assistant director, worked his way up through Bwesterns and low-budget features. But his talent for serious, character-driven storytelling quickly became apparent. 1939 Weathering Heights Lawrence Olivier Merl Oberon a passionate adaptation of Emily Bronty’s classic novel critical acclaim box office success Wiler’s first major triumph 1941 The Little Foxes B Davis in one of her greatest performances a dark family drama about greed and moral corruption another critical and

commercial success 1942 Mrs. Minver Greer Garson as a British housewife during World War II. The film wins six Academy Awards, including best picture and best director for Wiler, his first Oscar. 1946, the best years of our lives. Veterans returning from World War II, the challenges of readjusting to civilian life.

 Seven Academy Awards, including Wiler’s second best director, Oscar. Considered one of the greatest American films ever made. 1953 Roman Holiday. Audrey Hepburn’s star making performance as a princess discovering real life in Rome. Gregory Peek as the American reporter who falls in love with her. Wiler doesn’t win the Oscar, but Audrey does.

Another masterpiece of romantic drama. 1959 Benhur. Charlton H in the epic story of a Jewish prince in ancient Rome. The chariot race becomes one of cinema’s most famous sequences. 11 Academy Awards, still a record. Wiler’s third best director Oscar. This is William Wiler’s resume by 1965. Six decades of increasingly prestigious work.

 Three Academy Awards for directing. Dozens of nominations, films that define American cinema’s golden age. But notice something about this list. Every single film is a drama. serious, character-driven, emotionally complex drama. Wiler has never made a comedy, never attempted light entertainment, never tried to make audiences laugh rather than cry.

 His specialty is human emotion in extreme circumstances. War, death, love, betrayal, redemption. Heavy themes requiring deep psychological understanding. Complex characters facing moral dilemmas. Stories that explore the human condition with unflinching honesty. Comedy requires completely different skills.

 timing, rhythm, an understanding of what makes people laugh rather than what makes them think. The ability to find humor in situations rather than profoundity, a light touch rather than dramatic weight. These are skills Wiler has never developed, never needed. His entire career has been built on the opposite approach. Seriousness over lightness, depth over surface, drama over comedy.

By 1965, at age 63, William Wiler is set in his artistic ways, established in his methods, comfortable with his reputation as Hollywood’s premier director of serious films, which makes his decision to direct How to Steal a Million all the more puzzling and all the more catastrophic. 1965, William Wiler is offered the script for How to Steal a Million, a light-hearted heist comedy about a woman who must steal her father’s forged artwork to prevent its exposure, starring Audrey Hepern, with whom he made the classic Roman holiday. These

forgotten stories deserve to be told. If you think so, too, subscribe and like this video. Thank you for keeping these memories alive. Why does Wiler accept this project? Several factors combined to create the perfect storm of poor decision-making. First, Audrey Hepburn. She specifically requests [music] Wiler as director.

 They have history together. Roman Holiday was a massive success. [music] Audrey trusts Wiler, respects his talent, believes he can elevate any material. The personal relationship clouds Wiler’s judgment. He sees this as an opportunity to work with Audrey again to recreate the magic of their previous collaboration.

He doesn’t consider that Roman Holiday, despite its romantic elements, was still fundamentally a drama, a serious story about duty versus desire. Second career restlessness. By 1965, Wiler has achieved everything possible in dramatic films. Three Oscars, critical immortality, financial success. But perhaps he’s bored, looking for new challenges, wanting to prove his versatility.

This is a common trap for successful artists. The belief that mastery in one area automatically translates to mastery in another. That talent is universal rather than specific. That a great dramatic director can simply decide to become a great comedy director. Third, industry pressure. The mid 1960s represent a changing Hollywood.

 The old studio system is collapsing. Audiences are younger. preferences are shifting toward lighter, more commercial entertainment. Wiler may feel pressured to modernize, to prove he’s not stuck in the past. The success of directors like Billy Wilder, who moved seamlessly between drama and comedy, makes it seem possible. If Wilder can do Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, why can’t Wiler do Ben her and How to Steal a Million? But this logic ignores fundamental differences in artistic temperament.

Wilder was always a wit. His dramas contain comedic elements. His worldview is naturally ironic. Wiler’s worldview is earnest, sincere, noble. He believes in the inherent dignity of human experience. Fourth, the script’s surface appeal. How to Steal a Million isn’t lowbrow slapstick. It’s sophisticated comedy set in Paris involving art forgery and museum heists starring elegant actors in beautiful costumes.

 It seems like the kind of classy comedy that might suit Wiler’s sensibilities. But sophisticated subject matter doesn’t automatically create sophisticated film making. Comedy is about execution, not content. About timing, not taste. About understanding what makes audiences laugh, not what makes them admire. When Wiler commits to how to steal a million, he’s making a decision based on external factors, personal relationships, [music] career ambitions, industry trends, rather than artistic instincts.

He’s taking on a project outside his expertise for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to succeed. The warning signs are everywhere. But Wiler, confident from decades of success, believes his general film making skills will compensate for his lack of comedy experience. He’s about to learn how wrong he is.

Production on How to Steal a Million begins in 1965. From the start, it’s clear that William Wiler is out of his element. The director who commanded absolute authority on dramatic sets struggles with the fundamentals of comedy film making. Comedy requires different pacing than drama. Dramatic scenes can build slowly.

Allow characters time to develop emotional depth. permit long takes that explore psychological complexity. Comedy needs tighter editing, quicker rhythms, precise timing that sets up and pays off jokes. Wiler doesn’t understand these distinctions. [music] He directs comedy scenes the same way he directs dramatic scenes.

 Long, lingering shots, careful character development, emphasis on emotional truth rather than comedic truth. The result is comedy that feels heavy jokes that land with the weight of dramatic moments, situations that should be light and frothy but feel ponderous and overconsidered. Audrey Hepburn notices the problem but can’t solve it.

 She’s worked with comedy directors before. Billy Wilder in Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon. Blake Edwards in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She knows what comedy direction should feel like. With those directors, there was spontaneity, playfulness, a willingness to experiment with different approaches until something felt right.

 Wiler treats every scene like it must be perfect from the first take, like there’s only one correct way to perform each moment. Peter Oul, fresh from Lawrence of Arabia, also struggles under Wiler’s direction. He’s naturally witty, charming, capable of light comedy. But Wiler’s serious approach suppresses those qualities, makes him perform with dramatic weight rather than comedic lightness.

The museum heist sequence, which should be the film’s comic highlight, becomes a case study in Wiler’s misunderstanding of comedy principles. He shoots it like a real heist with suspense and tension rather than humor and cleverness. If you want more untold stories like this, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a like.

 Your support means everything to us. The famous scene where Oul uses a boomerang to disable the museum’s alarm system should be hilarious. A ridiculous solution to a serious problem. But Wiler directs it straight like it’s a legitimate strategy rather than an absurd joke. Similarly, the closet sequence where Heepburn and Oul hide while planning their theft should crackle with romantic and comedic tension.

Instead, it plays like two people having a serious conversation about crime. Wiler’s dramatic instincts keep asserting themselves. He wants to explore the psychological motivations of the characters, understand their emotional depths, find the serious themes beneath the comic surface. But this approach kills comedy.

 Jokes need to be light, not meaningful. Characters need to be archetypal, not complex. Situations need to be absurd, not psychologically realistic. The supporting cast suffers most under Wiler’s misdirection. Eli Wallik, a naturally funny actor, is given nothing comedically interesting to do. Charles Boyer, capable of sophisticated wit, is reduced to exposition delivery.

Life magazine later identifies this as a key failure. Acts of negligence bordering on the criminal and how the supporting cast is wasted. Post production doesn’t solve the problems. Wiler’s editing reflects his dramatic sensibilities. Scenes that should move quickly are allowed to breathe.

 Moments that should be punchy are given weight. The rhythm of comedy is completely lost. By the time How to Steal a Million is completed, everyone involved knows it’s not working. But it’s too late to fix fundamental problems that originate in the director’s approach to the material. Wiler has created a comedy that isn’t funny, a heist film without excitement, a romantic story without chemistry, all because he’s applied dramatic techniques to comedic material.

 July 15th, 1966. How to Steal a Million opens to the most savage reviews of William Wiler’s career. Critics who have spent decades praising his dramatic masterpieces turn on him with unprecedented viciousness. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times sets the tone. The plot is preposterous. It is still a delightful lot of flurry while it is going on, especially the major central business of burglarizing the museum.

Even this mixed review dams with faint praise. Crowther essentially says the film works only during its action sequences. The rest, character development, dialogue, pacing fails completely. But it’s Life magazine that delivers the killing blow. Their review is particularly devastating because it comes from a publication that usually supports prestigious Hollywood filmm.

For its first hour, William Wilers’s film rests heavily merely upon its comic potentials. Instead of jokes, we have a collection of views of Paris. Views of posh interiors and of Miss Heburn modeling a succession of Gioveni frocks. The review continues, “The truth is that for far too long, the film is just another distressingly big comedy of our times.

 Overdressed and underfunned and underfunn.” Those four words capture everything wrong with Wiler’s approach to [music] comedy. He’s treated it like a dramatic spectacle. All surface, no substance, all style, no laughs. Life’s criticism becomes more specific. Then, just when all seems lost, a very nice thing happens.

 It becomes necessary for Miss Heepburn and Mr. Oul to steal a bit of statuary from a heavily guarded museum. From this unlikely command post, they engineer a fine, funny filch. The review identifies the museum heist as the film’s only successful sequence, but then delivers another devastating blow.

 I would not go so far as to say that their half hour in the closet saves the picture, but it certainly makes it bearable. Translation: The film is so bad that one decent sequence almost makes it watchable. Almost. [music] Lif concludes with the most damaging assessment. It’s annoying that Wiler and screenwriter Karnets waited so long to prove they had the stuff of solid comedy within them.

I suggest you plan to arrive in the middle of the picture. A major publication is literally telling readers to skip the first half of a William Wiler film. This is unprecedented. Wiler has never received advice to audiences to avoid portions of his work. Other reviews follow similar patterns. Critics praise individual elements.

Audrey’s performance, the Paris locations, the production values. While condemning Wiler’s direction and the overall comedic failure, the recurring theme is disappointment. Critics expect brilliance from William Wiler. They’ve been trained by decades of masterpieces to anticipate greatness. How to Steal a Million represents a shocking fall from those expectations.

Several reviews specifically compare the film to Wiler’s dramatic work. The implicit question, how can the man who made Ben her create something so mediocre? The answer, which critics begin to understand, is that Wiler has attempted something completely outside his artistic DNA. He’s tried to be Billy Wilder when he’s always been David Lean, attempted Preston Sturgis when he’s fundamentally John Ford.

The critical consensus is clear. William Wiler should stick to what he knows. Drama, serious film making, stories that explore the human condition rather than exploit it for laughs. The critical failure of How to Steal a Million might have been survivable if the film had found an audience. Many directors recover from bad reviews through popular success.

But Wiler’s comedy disaster compounds its artistic failure with commercial catastrophe. 20th Century Fox invests heavily in the production. Big stars. Audrey Hepburn commands her usual high salary. Peter Oul is expensive following [music] Lawrence of Arabia. William Wiler’s fee reflects his status as a three-time Oscar winner.

expensive locations. The film shoots extensively in Paris, authentic French settings, luxurious interiors, museum locations, the kind of production values associated with prestige film making, high-end costumes, Siobhani designs, Audrey’s wardrobe. Each outfit is couture. The fashion budget alone equals the entire cost of smaller films.

marketing campaign. Fox promotes How to Steal a Million as sophisticated entertainment, sophisticated stars, sophisticated director, sophisticated European setting. They’re selling elegance and wit, total investment. The film needs to earn $12 million in rentals to break even. This is substantial money in 1966, equivalent to perhaps $100 million today when adjusted for inflation and industry changes.

The reality, How to Steal a Million earns $10.45 million, a loss of $1.55 million. In percentage terms, it recovers only 87% of its investment. For a major studio production with A-list talent, this is disaster territory. Why does it fail commercially? Several factors combined to create box office poison. Audience confusion.

Wiler’s reputation attracts viewers expecting serious drama. Instead, they get attempted comedy. The tonal mismatch disappoints his traditional audience without attracting comedy fans. Competition. 1966 is a strong year for entertainment. The Sound of Music is still playing in many theaters. Dr. Jaago attracts adult audiences.

Batman captures younger demographics. How to Steal a Million has no clear market position. Word of mouth. Bad reviews create negative buzz. Audiences who see the film don’t recommend it to friends. The lack of genuine laughs makes it unsuitable for repeat viewing. Seasonal timing. Summer 1966 isn’t ideal for sophisticated comedy.

Audiences want either big spectacles or light entertainments. How to Steal a Million is too sophisticated for mass audiences and too unfunny for sophisticated viewers. International performance. The film performs slightly better overseas, particularly in European markets where the Paris setting and Audrey’s popularity provide some appeal, but international sales can’t compensate for domestic failure.

The financial loss hurts everyone involved. Fox loses money on a prestige production. Wiler’s reputation for commercial reliability is damaged. Future projects become harder to finance based on his track record. More significantly, the failure demonstrates that star power and directorial reputation don’t guarantee success.

Audiences are becoming more discriminating. They won’t support films just because famous people [music] made them. How to Steal a Million represents a watershed moment in William Wiler’s career. Not just because of its failure, but because of what that failure reveals about the changing nature of Hollywood and directorial success.

Immediate impact. Wiler’s next project, Funny Girl, 1968, returns him to familiar territory. A dramatic musical about real people facing real challenges. Barbara Stryand’s Fanny Bryce Story contains both comedy and drama, but it’s fundamentally serious entertainment about artistic ambition and personal sacrifice.

Funny Girl succeeds critically and commercially. Stryand wins the Oscar for best actress. Wiler proves he can still make successful films when working within his strengths, but he never attempts pure comedy again. How to Steal a Million teaches him a permanent lesson about artistic limitations and the dangers of genre experimentation late in a career.

Long-term reputation. Today, how to steal a million is largely forgotten in discussions of Wiler’s career. Film scholars focus on his dramatic masterpieces, Benhur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday. The comedy disaster becomes a footnote. But that footnote is significant. It demonstrates that even the greatest directors have limitations.

That artistic excellence in one area doesn’t automatically transfer to another. That late career experimentation carries enormous risks. Industry lessons. How to steal a million becomes a cautionary tale for other directors considering genre switches. Studios become more careful about matching directors to appropriate material.

The failure contributes to increased best specialization in Hollywood filmm. Modern perspective. Contemporary critics and film scholars view How to Steal a Million more charitably than 1966 reviewers. Time has softened its perceived failures. Some elements, the chemistry between Heepburn and UL, the museum heist sequence, the Paris cinematography are now appreciated.

Rotten Tomatoes [music] gives it 100% based on 11 reviews. Though this reflects selective modern appreciation rather than contemporary consensus, the film has also gained cult status among Audrey Heper fans who appreciate seeing her in a different type of role and among heist movie enthusiasts who recognize its influence on later films.

Cultural impact. Despite its commercial failure, How to Steal a Million has had lasting influence. The museum heist sequence has been copied by multiple films across different languages and cultures. Hindi cinema, Tamil films and Argentine movies have borrowed its techniques. This suggests that while Wiler failed to create successful comedy, he did create memorable visual storytelling.

 His dramatic instincts, while wrong for comedy, produced sequences that work as pure cinema. Final assessment. How to Steal a Million represents the dangers of artistic overreach. William Wiler was one of cinema’s greatest directors, but only within his area of expertise. His attempt to expand beyond drama into comedy nearly destroyed his reputation and definitely damaged his commercial viability.

The film serves as a reminder that artistic greatness comes from understanding and maximizing one’s strengths, not from attempting to master every possible genre. William Wiler won three Oscars for dramas. He tried comedy once and learned that some artistic territories are better left unexplored. Even legends have limits.

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