{"id":713997,"date":"2026-06-19T17:53:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/713997\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T17:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T17:53:16","slug":"daughter-of-director-william-wyler-found-dead-with-husband-in-running-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/713997\/","title":{"rendered":"Daughter Of Director William Wyler Found Dead With Husband In Running Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJudith Sheldon<\/a>, daughter of the legendary Hollywood director William Wyler<\/a>, was found dead along with her husband Wylie Sheldon<\/a> in a parked and still-running car on the side of Interstate 5, north of Redding, California, on Monday, June 15. <\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to media reports, the couple, longtime patrons of San Francisco\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Shasta County (California) Sheriff\u2019s Office indicated to The New York Times that extreme heat conditions might have contributed to the couple\u2019s deaths. A spokesman for the Sheriff\u2019s Office tells Deadline that postmortem examinations are in the process of being scheduled.<\/p>\n

\n\tNews reports indicate that the Jeep\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tInvestigators do not suspect foul play, and the vehicle, which had plenty of gas, showed no signs of mechanical failure.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the friends who had been waiting for the couple in Oregon told The Times, \u201cThey didn\u2019t crash. They stopped. They both just died there. The entire thing is so bizarre. We\u2019re still in a state of shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe couple, residents of San Francisco\u2019s Pacific Heights neighborhood, were well known in the city\u2019s arts communities: Judith was a chairman of the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and were patrons of the San Francisco Opera\u00a0and San Francisco Performances. <\/p>\n

\n\tBorn May 21, 1942, in Los Angeles, Judith, credited as Judy Wyler, appeared in at least two of her famous father\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tJudith had other acting roles as a young adult, appearing in such TV shows as The Buccaneers and The Errol Flynn Theatre. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile 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\u2019s father who secured the family\u2019s place as Hollywood royalty. Universally considered one of Hollywood\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sheldons had two sons, but complete information on survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judith Sheldon, daughter of the legendary Hollywood director William Wyler, was found dead along with her husband Wylie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,307835,13441,219113,307034],"class_list":["post-713997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-judith-sheldon","tag-obituary","tag-william-wyler","tag-wylie-sheldon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}