New York and on television · 1971–1989
Bill W. turned down a movie of his life. At his death AA gave his name to the press, and in 1989 television made one.
“This may have been one of the best kept secrets of modern times”
When Bill W. died in January 1971, AA’s office newsletter listed honors he had turned down, among them “a movie of his life story.” And it reported what his death had changed: “Upon his death, Bill’s full name was revealed by A.A.’s General Service Board to public news media for the first time.” It had long been clear that his anonymity probably couldn’t survive the obituaries, it said, “So the Board arranged this particular exception to the Tradition: Bill and Lois concurred.” (Legacy, in Number One Man, tells the day.)
For everyone else, AA’s advice stood. As the 1988 Conference reaffirmed an action of 1971: “AA members generally think it unwise to break the anonymity of a member even after his death, but in each situation the final decision must rest with the family.”
Others told his story. A writer, Robert Thomsen, was given the use of AA’s archives in return for letting the office review his manuscript, and his biography, Bill W., came out in 1975. AA’s board bought several thousand copies to sell at the Denver convention that July. Members objected that the office was endorsing an outside book, and the next year the Conference told it to stop. The office’s manager, Bob P., said later that the board “had simply assumed naively that a biography of the co-founder would be welcomed by the Fellowship.”
AA made its own film. The 1979 Conference approved Alcoholics Anonymous—An Inside View for the public, with a voice-over added at the end “repeating that film techniques have been employed to protect the anonymity of A.A. members,” and kept it off television for a year, outside a test area or two. When it went into general release in 1980, the Conference voted that “the pictures of Bill W. and Dr. Bob remain in the film.”
Television came last. In 1984 AA’s office reported that it had “worked with the writers and co-producer of an upcoming NBC prime-time TV movie about Bill W. and early A.A.” Five years later a TV movie aired, on ABC: on April 30, 1989, the night after the General Service Conference closed under the theme “Anonymity—Living Our Traditions,” Hallmark Hall of Fame broadcast My Name Is Bill W., written by William G. Borchert and directed by Daniel Petrie, with James Woods as Bill. Woods won an Emmy for it.
It’s a Sunday night, April 30, 1989. On ABC, a movie begins about a stockbroker who drank himself out of Wall Street, and a doctor in Akron who couldn’t stop drinking either. James Woods plays the stockbroker. The title is the way AA members start to speak at meetings: My Name Is Bill W.
Bill himself had turned down a movie of his life. In all his years in AA, his full name never went to the press, and he turned down the cover of Time. When he died in 1971, AA’s board let it go out, as an exception, and Bill and Lois had agreed.
After that his story was anyone’s to tell: a biography in 1975, AA’s own film in 1979, with his picture in it, and at last this one, eighteen years after his death.
After Bill
After Bill W.’s death: a biography, AA’s own film about itself, which kept his picture in, and a television movie of his life, with what happened around them.
From Bob P.’s history, AA’s Conference actions, AA’s office newsletter (1971 and 1984), Arthur S.’s timeline and the Television Academy.
1975
Robert Thomsen’s biography, written with AA’s archives open to him. AA’s office sold it at the Denver convention, and members objected that the office was endorsing an outside book.
Off the office’s shelves, 1976
Bob P.; Conference actions, 1976
1979
AA’s own film for the public, with a voice-over saying that film techniques protect the members’ anonymity. Kept off television for a year, outside a test area or two.
Released to all, 1980, with the founders’ pictures
Conference actions, 1979 and 1980
April 30, 1989
ABC’s Hallmark Hall of Fame, with James Woods as Bill W., James Garner as Dr. Bob and JoBeth Williams as Lois.
An Emmy for James Woods
Arthur S.; Television Academy
A movie of his life
Eighteen years after his death, the kind of movie Bill had turned down came to television, with his name in the title the way members say it at meetings.
For a closer look
Who allowed his name to go out, an action the records don’t show, and what AA’s office came to think of the first biography.
AA’s office newsletter put it on the board: it “arranged this particular exception,” and Bill and Lois agreed. The New York Times reported that he had given his permission himself, in a statement he signed in 1966. (Legacy, in Number One Man, follows the Times.)
Either way, nothing in AA’s Traditions forbade it. “The Traditions make no reference to posthumous anonymity,” Pass It On notes.
The 1988 Conference reaffirmed “the 1971 General Service Conference Action” on anonymity after death. The list of AA’s Conference actions on hand doesn’t show one for 1971.
Arthur S., the historian, traced the words further back: to a policy the General Service Board approved in 1960, and to a 1968 Conference recommendation that the board use the same statement in answering questions about members who had died.
Bob P. agreed with the members who objected to the office selling Thomsen’s book. He found other reasons to keep a distance from it, too: it was mainly the love story of Bill and Lois and the story of his drinking, he said, and it treated Bill’s part in AA “rather superficially.”
The book went on selling in bookstores, in paperback and condensed by Reader’s Digest. The Conference later had AA write its own biography of Bill, Pass It On, published in 1984. (Mr. Anonymous, in Number One Man, has one of Thomsen’s stories.)