Chief? McLeod!

DETECTIVE STORY

1951

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Robert Wyler and Philip Yordan (based on the play by Sidney Kingsley)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Father knows best

THE DESPERATE HOURS

1955

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Joseph Hayes and Jay Dratler (based on the play by Joseph Hayes)

Spoiler alert: mild

The only law west of the Pecos

THE WESTERNER

1940

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Niven Busch, Jo Swerling, Stuart N. Lake, W.R. Burnett, Lillian Hellman, and Oliver La Farge

Spoiler alert: moderate

You love a fight your style, but I wonder if you've got the stomach for it, gentleman-style

THE BIG COUNTRY

1958

Directed by William Wyler

Written by James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett, and Robert Wilder (based on the novel Ambush at Blanco Canyon by Donald Hamilton)

Spoiler alert: dreams stay with you, like a lover's voice, 'cross the mountainside (okay, okay, moderate)

20 years ago, we took over their land, their cotton, and their daughter

THE LITTLE FOXES

1941

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Lillian Hellman, Arthur Kober, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell (based on the play by Lillian Hellman)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Believe women, sure, but Bette Davis?

THE LETTER

1940

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Howard E. Koch (based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Maybe I love her most when she's her meanest

JEZEBEL

1938

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, and John Huston (based on the play by Owen Davis)

Spoiler alert: moderate

The love that dare not speak its name until halfway through the third act

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

1961

Directed by William Wyler

Written by John Michael Hayes (based on the play by Lillian Hellman)

THESE THREE

1936

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Lillian Hellman (based on her play The Children's Hour)

Spoiler alert: moderate, maybe high

The great beauty

ROMAN HOLIDAY

1953

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Dalton Trumbo and John Dighton

Spoiler alert: moderate

Life after wartime

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

1946

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Robert E. Sherwood (based on the novella Glory For Me by MacKinley Kantor)

Spoiler alert: moderate

I'm a society burglar—I don't expect people to rush about shooting me

HOW TO STEAL A MILLION

1966

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Harry Kurnitz (based on the story "Venus Rising" by George Bradshaw)

Spoiler alert: moderate

I tell you, they're drunk with religion

BEN-HUR

Perhaps the finest of its breed, Ben-Hur is a smashing entertainment, an Old Testament kind of story set against the backdrop of the New.  It is fueled by a sharply-drawn and deeply-satisfying tale of revenge, animated by enormous sums of money, realized by some of cinema's all-time finest talents, electrified by its star, and, finally, glommed onto a good-enough Christian fable... just in case you felt like taking a nap after the chariot race (though, speaking personally, I think this part's reasonably swell, too).  Ben-Hur is everything you could ever want out of a Biblical epic (and probably more!), and it represents the Golden Age of Hollywood at its very best.

1959

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Karl Tunberg, S.N. Behrman, Maxwell Anderson, Christopher Fry, Gore Vidal, Andrew Marton, and Yakima Canutt (based on the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Gen. Lew Wallace)

With Charlton Heston (Judah Ben-Hur), Haya Harareet (Esther), Martha Scott (Mariam), Cathy O'Donnell (Tirzah), Sam Jaffe (Simonides), Finlay Currie (Balthazar the Egyptian), Hugh Griffith (Sheik Ilderim), Jack Hawkins (Quintus Arrius), and Stephen Boyd (Messala)

Spoiler alert: sadly, the Kingdom of Judea is not freed in any conventional or meaningful way