Judith Sheldon, daughter of the legendary Hollywood director William Wyler, was found dead along with her husband Wylie Sheldon in a parked and still-running car on the side of Interstate 5, north of Redding, California, on Monday, June 15.
According to media reports, the couple, longtime patrons of San Francisco’s film and arts scenes, were driving to Ashland, Oregon, to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The 84-year-old Judith and 86-year-old Wylie, a prominent lawyer, had failed to meet up with friends at the festival, as planned. The friends, according to The New York Times, later learned that the California Highway Patrol had found the couple at 5:46 p.m. Monday inside the parked Jeep Compass, with Judith in the driver seat and Wylie on the passanger side. Both were deceased.
The Shasta County (California) Sheriff’s Office indicated to The New York Times that extreme heat conditions might have contributed to the couple’s deaths. A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office tells Deadline that postmortem examinations are in the process of being scheduled.
News reports indicate that the Jeep’s fan was on high but the air conditioning was not working, indicating that the fan might have been blowing hot air. No water or other liquids were found in the vehicle.
Investigators do not suspect foul play, and the vehicle, which had plenty of gas, showed no signs of mechanical failure.
One of the friends who had been waiting for the couple in Oregon told The Times, “They didn’t crash. They stopped. They both just died there. The entire thing is so bizarre. We’re still in a state of shock.”
The couple, residents of San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, were well known in the city’s arts communities: Judith was a chairman of the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and were patrons of the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Performances.
Born May 21, 1942, in Los Angeles, Judith, credited as Judy Wyler, appeared in at least two of her famous father’s most celebrated films: In 1946 she appeared in an uncredited role in a department store scene of The Best Years Of Our Lives, and in 1953 she appeared, again uncredited, in Roman Holiday. (In that film, she and her sister Catherine play schoolgirls at the Trevi Fountain, where the character played by star Gregory Peck steals their camera.)
Judith had other acting roles as a young adult, appearing in such TV shows as The Buccaneers and The Errol Flynn Theatre.
While her mother, actor Margaret Tallichet, starred in the 1940 noir film Stranger on the Third Floor and the 1941 comedy It Started With Eve, it was Judith’s father who secured the family’s place as Hollywood royalty. Universally considered one of Hollywood’s all-time great directors, the three-time Oscar winner William Wyler directed such classics Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Ben-Hur (1959), Dodsworth (1936), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), The Heiress (1949), Roman Holiday (1953) Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Funny Girl (1968), among many others. He died in 1981.
The Sheldons had two sons, but complete information on survivors was not immediately available.