Among Wilder’s more accomplished early scripts, Hold Back the Dawn was drawn from the young writer’s own experience stranded on the Mexican frontier awaiting passage into the United States with other WWII émigrés. Charles Boyer is the smooth talking Continental who attempts to charm his way across the border in the arms of a naïve schoolteacher played by Olivia de Havilland. Although director Mitchell Leisen famously tampered with the script—a move that drove an irate Wilder into the director’s chair—Hold Back the Dawn embodies the Wilder touch in its dark undertones, gallows humor and gossamer dialogue.