Once upon a time in Hollywood, writers, directors, and actors had real lives—often adventurous, rugged, and thrilling—before they began making movies. They didn’t come to Hollywood as coddled children from the theater arts department or film school at a university. The Hollywood of yesteryear had some of the most independent and ornery characters that could come out of America. William Wellman was one of these.

In a career that spanned 40 years, Wellman directed 81 movies, including such classics as The Public Enemy with James Cagney, Call of the Wild with Clark Gable, Beau Geste with Gary Cooper, The Ox-Bow Incident with Henry Fonda, Story of G.I. Joe with Robert Mitchum, Battleground with Van Johnson, and Yellow Sky with Gregory Peck. Wellman directed the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings. There could have been no better director for a movie about the derring-do of World War I fighter pilots, because that is exactly what Wellman was, and it was in the skies over France that he earned his nickname, “Wild Bill.”

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1896, Wellman could trace his paternal ancestry back to the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640. His mother, Cecilia McCarthy, arrived in America in 1872 as a young child in an Irish family. With a square jaw, prominent chin, and flaming red hair, she could be mistaken for nothing but Irish. Little Billy Wellman was the second son in the family.

For the first eight years of Billy’s life, all went well, though the father, Arthur, drank more heavily with each passing year. Drinking finally caused Arthur to lose his job with a brokerage firm, and the family had to sell their home. The Wellmans moved to the neighboring town of Newton and rented a house. For the next several years, Arthur worked only intermittently, forcing Cecilia to find a job.

Teenage Billy Wellman threw himself into sports at Newton High School, lettering in football, baseball, and ice hockey. The Boston Sunday Post called him the best quarterback in the history of Newton High. A semi-pro ice hockey team asked him to drop out of high school and play for them. Billy decided he owed it to his mother to stay in school and graduate. In spite of this resolve, his wild streak and fighting nature got him into trouble again and again. Just shy of graduation, he dropped a stink bomb on the head of the principal and was immediately expelled from school.

Billy went to work at a variety of jobs but had a penchant for getting into fistfights and being fired. Deciding a regular job was not for him, he signed with the semi-pro hockey team that had made him an offer earlier. Now he was on the ice in the Boston Arena, not only scoring goals but also earning time in the penalty box for fighting. He was a fan favorite. One of those fans was Douglas Fairbanks, a famous actor who was in Boston for a stage play. Fairbanks told Billy, “If you ever need a job, come out to Hollywood and look me up.”

Another fan of Billy’s ice hockey prowess was Earle Ovington, a pioneer aviator, who invited Billy to an airfield outside of Boston. Billy was taken on flights, received flying instruction, and listened to stories about the beginnings of aviation. Billy now began dreaming of making a career as a pilot. At the same time, the war in Europe provided an opportunity to fly, if one was willing to risk death.

When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, 21-year-old William Wellman tried to enlist in the Army’s flight program but was rejected because he didn’t have a high school diploma. He hatched a plan to go to France, enlist in the French Foreign Legion, and then, if accepted, transfer into the French Air Service, which had a unit for American pilots: the Lafayette Flying Corps, with its famous squadron, the Lafayette Escadrille.

By mid-June 1917, Wellman was in Paris, waiting to begin training with the Legion. While walking along the Seine River, he spied a young woman dressed in black and perched on a bridge. Suddenly, she leaped and plummeted into the water far below. Wellman stripped off his boots and jacket, dived into the river, and swam to the spot where she had hit the water. He saw her head bob to the surface and then disappear. He dived after her, brought her to the surface, and towed her to a pier.

“She never stopped struggling,” Wellman said. “I thought she was trying to get away from me. I was a fine swimmer, had been taught how to save a person under these conditions, so I cold-cocked her, she became limp and I was able to get her to the pier and pull her up on it.”

Bystanders thought Wellman was a hero, but the woman he saved stared at him with, as he described it, “frozen hatred.” She was one of the many French women who attempted to commit suicide when they learned their husband had died fighting at the front.

Wellman was in training at a French Foreign Legion camp in the south of France by late June. Conditions were horrible, but Wellman’s spirits were buoyed by a couple dozen other Americans who were training with him, all hoping to make their way into the Lafayette Flying Corps. There were even two Americans Wellman knew from back home in Massachusetts. Wellman excelled in his Legion training and was transferred into the Flying Corps. He flew in a series of airplanes, each one more advanced. Training accidents, mostly due to weather or mechanical failures, left many a would-be pilot injured or dead, including one of Wellman’s American friends.

At the end of September, Wellman graduated from the basic flight class and went to advanced fighter school for aerobatics and gunnery. In the shadow of the Pyrenees, the new school had far better accommodations and food but demanded far more of the pilots in the air. Wellman again excelled. The school’s commander wrote on Wellman’s graduation certificate in November, “A born pilot—but crazy!”

Wellman was now sent to an airfield 30 miles from Paris for his final training before combat. On a wintry day, he was returning to the airfield with thick clouds above and dense ground fog below. The usual landmarks were obscured and he couldn’t see the ground, let alone the runway. He dived into the fog and leveled out to where he thought the airstrip should be. Instead, he found himself over an old battlefield short of the runway. He was so close to the ground his landing gear got entangled in rolls of barbed wire that had once protected the trenches. The plane lurched to a stop, damaged but repairable. Same for the pilot, Bill Wellman.

In December 1917, Wellman was sent to the Lafayette Flying Corps to replace a pilot recently killed. Now Corporal Wellman, he volunteered to fly a mission the day after he arrived. He was told to strafe and bomb a German airfield but to not make more than two passes at the field, otherwise he would run out of fuel.

By flying at treetop level, Wellman surprised the Germans at dawn. On his first pass, he strafed and bombed planes and hangers without any return fire. On his second pass, bullets whizzed by his head, and others hit his plane. It was time to head home, but his blood was up and he couldn’t resist a third pass. Return fire this time was intense. With his ammunition exhausted and his plane full of holes, he headed for home.

Back at the airfield, his fellow pilots were worrying. Wellman had been gone too long. Then they spotted a tiny speck in the sky. Wellman’s plane! But it seemed to be approaching the field too slowly. They soon realized Wellman was out of gas and gliding in. He barely cleared a nearby hilltop and then skimmed trees at the end of the runway. His dead-stick landing, though, was perfect. Cheering and applauding, the pilots ran out to the bullet-riddled plane and a smiling Corporal Wellman. His squadron commander looked at both, shook his head, and christened him “Wild Bill.”

Whenever weather permitted, Wellman was in the air, shooting down enemy planes and attacking enemy airfields. Awarded the Croix de Guerre, he was promoted to sergeant. In March 1918, he flew for the first time in support of American forces, the 42nd Infantry, known as the Rainbow Division. The 42nd was ordered to lead an attack on German lines. “Under no conditions will you allow an enemy’s machine to fly over the French and American lines!” Wellman and the other pilots were told. “If they attack, and your machine gun jams, ram your opponent!”

Circling over the battlefield, Wellman wished he were wearing an American uniform rather than a French one. An American artillery barrage began and Wellman watched American soldiers of the Rainbow Division scramble out of trenches and move forward. Almost at the same time, German planes arrived. Without hesitation, Wild Bill dived his plane into them, shooting one down with the initial burst of his machine gun. Before the air battle ended, he shot down a second enemy plane and damaged a third, forcing it to land. Wild Bill was awarded another palm leaf for his Croix de Guerre. 

On March 21, 1918, Wellman was flying a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory when he saw a small French village with a German flag flying over it and German soldiers lounging about. Recon mission or not, Wild Bill couldn’t resist strafing the enemy and killed several before they reached cover. On subsequent passes, his bullets caused a fire and explosion in an ammo dump and knocked down the pole flying the German flag.

With his plane full of holes and his engine sputtering from enemy fire, Wellman headed for home. He was some miles from the village when an antiaircraft shell hit his plane, and the explosion knocked Wellman silly. Blood running out of his ears and nose, he tried to control what was left of his plane as it plummeted downward. Fast approaching a thick forest, he reckoned his end was near. A gust of wind, though, suddenly slowed the fall of the plane into the treetops. The impact threw him out of the plane and he was knocked cold while crashing to the ground tree limb by tree limb.  

Wild Bill woke up in a French hospital and learned that a patrol of French soldiers found him unconscious and brought him back to friendly territory. He had broken his back in two places, had shrapnel in his face, and was suffering from
internal bleeding. But he was alive.

On March 29, 1918, Sgt. William Wellman was discharged from the Lafayette Flying Corps. He left with four confirmed aerial victories and three probables, and dozens of enemy planes destroyed on the ground. On his chest were the Croix de Guerre with two Palms, the Grande Guerre, and the Verdun Medal.

After more than a month of rehabilitation in France, Wellman, wearing a back brace, stepped off a ship at New York. The next day, newspapers in New York and Boston ran stories on him. “Sergeant William Wellman arrives with coveted Croix de Guerre,” reported the New York Tribune. “Wounded flier glad to see New York again but hears call of battlefront,” declared the Boston Globe. When he arrived back home in Newton, Massachusetts, throngs of people awaited him.

For more than two months, Wellman was on the war-hero circuit, giving speeches and interviews. He didn’t enjoy it in the least. What Wellman really wanted was a commission in the U.S. Army Air Service and a return to the battlefront, but he suspected his injured back would cause him to fail the physical. He got a call from an officer in Washington whom he had known in the Lafayette Escadrille. The officer was organizing a unit of combat veteran pilots to be instructors in dogfighting for Army pilots. Wellman was overjoyed but expressed his doubts about passing a physical. “Don’t worry,” the officer said. Wellman failed the physical, but strings were pulled and he was commissioned a first lieutenant and ordered to Rockwell Field in San Diego Bay.

Wild Bill was delighted to be a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army and to be flying again. Highly respected and admired by the pilots he was training, he was determined to have them well-prepared for aerial combat. After a month of instructing and mock dogfights, though, he grew restless, missing the adrenaline rush of combat. He wondered if he could somehow get orders cut for duty again at the front in France. Wild Bill was still Wild Bill.  

Just then, a Hollywood producer hosted a dinner party in Wellman’s honor at the Hotel Del Coronado, a world-famous hotel on the Coronado Peninsula, close to Rockwell Field. “This was my introduction to a new wonder world—the land of the cinema,” Wellman said. “There were a lot of strange new people there, actors and actresses, and they liked me and the uniform and the medals; and I was very humble, and my limp was eye-catching.”

Early in November 1918, the Army put on an air show at Rockwell Field. With the war in Europe drawing to a close, the Army was eager to show off its air base and its planes to ensure the general public and politicians would continue to support funding for the Army’s Air Service. It was a grand event displaying planes and weapons. An Army marching band entertained the crowd, which included generals and other high-ranking officers, as well as prominent politicians and businessmen and San Diego city officials. The Army’s finest planes flew into a beautiful blue San Diego sky in squadron order. The pilots made passes over airfield in formations and then performed various aerobatics to thrill the spectators. The crowd roared and cheered.

Over a loudspeaker, an Air Service officer announced the grand finale of the air show “flown by our top instructor, Lt. William Wellman, a decorated fighter pilot performing a series of spectacular stunts. I told him to show you something you hadn’t seen before. Take it away, Wild Bill!”

Wellman performed spectacular stunts punctuated by low passes over the awestruck crowd. He decided on one final stunt, performed as close to the ground as possible. All went well until his final maneuver, when a wing tip clipped the ground and the plane cartwheeled to a stop. Pulled from the wreck and taken to a hospital, Wellman miraculously had nothing but three minor fractures and two knocked-out teeth. His first words were, “Well, I showed ‘em somethin’ they hadn’t seen before.”

Within days, Lt. Wellman was ready to fly again, but the war ended with the Armistice on Nov. 11 and he was mustered out of the Army. He recalled Douglas Fairbanks telling him to look him up if he gets to Hollywood, and he heard about a lavish polo party Fairbanks and his wife, Mary Pickford, would be hosting. The who’s who of Hollywood would be there.

Wild Bill made his entrance to the party at 135 mph in a Spad fighter, flying low over the polo field, then climbing to a higher altitude and performing stunts. The party-goers watched in awe, thinking this was a special treat courtesy of Fairbanks and Pickford. Wellman landed, climbed out of the cockpit in his medal-bedecked uniform, and walked up to Douglas Fairbanks.  “Remember me, Mr. Fairbanks? You said if I ever came to Hollywood to look you up.” Fairbanks turned to his wife and said, “Mary, I’d like you to meet Wild Bill Wellman. He’s a hell of a hockey player and a war hero.”

Wellman spent the next 40 years in Hollywood, first as an actor then as a director and writer. He won the Oscar for Best Writing for A Star is Born, which he also directed and for which he received a nomination for Best Director.

After several short-lived marriages, Wellman married freckle-faced Dorothy Coonan in 1934. A dancer who had appeared in 10 movies, she was only 19. He was 38. Everyone predicted this would be another of Wild Bill’s short-lived Hollywood marriages, but the Wellmans would have 7 children and remain happily married until he died 41 years later.

Late in 1975, Wellman was diagnosed with leukemia. Rejecting various treatments, he said he’d rather spend his last days at home and not in a hospital. Three months later, he lay on his deathbed. A priest administered last rites, and Wild Bill told his oldest son to take care of his mother. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “I’ve lived the life of a hundred men.”◆