On the Porch with Bill

I never knew him as William Jenner, simply Bill. He had no real reason to give me any time, me being a fairly green fellow who’d barely arrived in Hollywood with a couple of screenplays in hand alongside the fire to make some films. Nevertheless, he read one of them and really liked it. He thought we ought to find some time to talk about everything, which I of course jumped on without hesitation. So, one day I went to his and Yvonne’s house in the hills and found myself sitting on the porch with Bill.

He’d been an attorney for much of his life, until one of Yvonne's cases turned into a story that turned into a film, or really a two-part mini series, with a good cast. She had produced the project while Bill took part from behind the scenes. I think that’s the way he preferred it. The two ended up making more films together, culminating with The Rosa Parks Story which had released a couple of years prior to my arrival. All this had given him an understanding of the business, of how people in the city operated, and what to look out for. None of it had diminished his passion for storytelling and finding special moments in life that could use a closer look.

Calm and full of experience he talked about what I’d written, with bubbles of excitement coming to the surface when he steered our conversation to the script dialogue and characters in particular. Although he never grew outright loud or boisterous, you could feel the exclamation points in his phrases. There was a matter-of-fact way to how he spoke, how he weaved fitting movie recommendations into different aspects of the discussion, and he had what I can easily describe as an unpretentious way of looking at the film industry as a whole. Nearly everything he said felt considered.

After we had talked at length, he turned to look at me and exclaimed with surprising confidence that I would be able to make it in town, even with what I was already able to do. Bill and Yvonne were the first in Hollywood to really give my creative life the time of day in a meaningful way, and they backed their words with action. Yvonne especially took the outward lead on integrating me more into the production side. Our friendship lasted beyond my time in Los Angeles, where conversations with Bill had continued in the vein of film, storytelling, and day-to-day musings. Often busy in his study, he would always pop out to say hello when I stopped by.

Bill died in 2023, but I can hope that others are lucky to find people who encourage them, and that more and more people discover how even those who leave modest footprints may well have a world behind them.