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That Wyler survived this occupational ordeal to become one of Hollywood's few top directors is due to his perseverance and talent. That he became the exception to Hollywood's rule of nepotism is a minor phenomenon. His mother's cousin, famed Nepotist Carl Laemmle, who liked to staff his movie enterprises with relatives, domestic and foreign, plucked Wyler from his Alsace-Lorraine home shortly after World War I, set him down at Universal. He left the studio in 1935.
Wyler is neither cocky nor objectionably conceited, but he vigorously maintains that "the best picture or star in the world is not worth a tinker's damn without good direction." His pictures speak for him: These Three, Dodsworth, Dead End, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, The Letter, The Little Foxes, etc. They have not spoken loudly enough, however, to win him an Academy Oscar for direction, despite the fact that few directors can match his picture-by-picture output.
Good directors make quiet pictures, and Miniver's freedom from unnatural clamor is pleasant proof of it. Some of the picture's atmosphere is directly due to Wyler's World War I experiences. He was twelve when the war began, and his parents' home in Mulhouse was French. Alsace-Lorraine was a major battleground. Mulhouse changed hands a dozen times before the Armistice, and Wyler spent considerable time underground. His most vivid memory: crawling out of the cellar after each conflict, wondering whether he was French or German.
Wyler is renowned for shooting more film than any other director in the business. His reputation for wearing out actors with "unnecessary" retakes almost cost him the Grade A performance of Walter Pidgeon in Mrs. Miniver. It also earned him a rare tribute.
Tired from overwork and wary of hard-driving Director Wyler, Pidgeon agreed to play Mr. Miniver, with reservations. Before starting he sat on the set for a few days, watched Wyler shoot one apparently perfect take after another. "But on the 18th take," says Pidgeon, "I suddenly knew about Wyler. It was perfect, but it hit you in the pit of the stomach like a sudden, perfect chord of music. It made all those perfect-looking previous takes look like hell." When the picture was finished, he said: "I left the screening of Miniver trying to remember which of my scenes were in, which had been cut. For the first time in my life I couldn't remember one thing I did. I only remember the entity. That's directing!"