A Star Is Born (1954 film)

A Star Is Born is a 1954 American musical drama film directed by George Cukor, written by Moss Hart, and starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Hart's screenplay is an adaptation of the original 1937 film, based on the original screenplay by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, and from the same story by William A. Wellman and Carson, with uncredited input from six additional writers—David O. Selznick, Ben Hecht, Ring Lardner Jr., John Lee Mahin, Budd Schulberg and Adela Rogers St. Johns.

It is the second of four official productions of A Star Is Born, with the first in 1937, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March; the third in 1976, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; and the fourth in 2018, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

Garland had not made a film since she had negotiated release from her MGM contract soon after filming began on Royal Wedding in 1950, and Star was promoted heavily as her comeback. For her performance, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her co-lead, Mason, was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. This marked the first time that a pair of actors were nominated for the same roles as a previous pair of actors (Gaynor and March in the 1937 original version) for their same respective films.

In 2000, the 1954 film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It ranked No. 43 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Passions list in 2002 and No. 7 on its list of greatest musicals in 2006. The song "The Man That Got Away" was ranked No. 11 on AFI's list of 100 top songs in films.

Plot

Esther Blodgett is an aspiring singer with a band, and Norman Maine is a former matinée idol whose career is beginning to decline. When he arrives intoxicated at a function at the Shrine Auditorium, studio publicist Matt Libby attempts to keep him offstage. Norman rushes away and bursts onto a stage where an orchestra is performing, but Esther pretends that he is part of the act.

Realizing that Esther has saved him from public humiliation, Norman invites her to dinner and watches her perform in an after-hours club. He urges her to follow her dream and convinces her she can break into movies. Esther tells Danny McGuire, her bandmate, that she is quitting their gig to pursue movies in LA.

Norman is called away early in the morning. He later hears Esther singing on a television commercial and tracks her down. Studio head Oliver Niles believes Esther is just a passing fancy for the actor but casts her in a small film role when Maine appeals to their friendship.

The studio arbitrarily changes her name to "Vicki Lester", which she finds out when she tries to pick up her paycheck. When Norman persuades Niles to hear "Vicki" sing, she is cast in an important musical film, making her a huge success. Her relationship with Norman flourishes, and they wed.

As Vicki's career continues to grow, Norman finds that his worsening alcoholism has rendered him unemployable. He arrives, late and drunk, in the middle of Vicki's Oscar acceptance speech and starts ranting at the audience for turning their backs on him. When Vicki attempts to calm Norman down, he accidentally strikes her in the face.

Vicki continues working and tells Oliver that Norman has entered a sanitarium. While visiting the racetrack, he runs into Libby, who mocks him for living on Vicki's money. The resulting fight prompts Norman to go on a drinking binge; he is arrested and sentenced to ninety days in jail.

Vicki bails him out and brings him home, where they are joined by Niles. Norman overhears Vicki telling Niles that she will retire from acting to care for him, and Niles retorting that Norman's poor life choices are his alone to bear. Finally realizing what he has done to himself, Vicki, his career, and the people around him, Norman tells Vicki that he is going for a swim, walks into the ocean, and drowns himself.

At Norman's funeral, Vicki is mobbed by reporters and insensitive fans. Despondent, she becomes a recluse. Finally, her old bandmate Danny convinces her to attend a charity function. When she arrives on stage, the master of ceremonies asks her to say a few words to her fans. She says, "Hello, everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine", which prompts the crowd into a standing ovation.

Cast

Production

In December 1952, George Cukor was approached by Sid Luft, who proposed the director helm a musical remake of the 1937 film A Star Is Born, with his then wife Judy Garland in the lead role. Garland had portrayed Vicki Lester in a December 1942 Lux Radio Theater broadcast with Walter Pidgeon, and she and Luft, along with several associates, had formed Transcona Enterprises specifically to produce the project on screen. Cukor had declined to direct the original film because it was too similar to his 1932 work What Price Hollywood?, but the opportunity to direct his first Technicolor film and first musical, work with screenwriter Moss Hart, and especially with Garland, appealed to him, and he accepted. It was Garland's first film since leaving MGM.

Getting the updated film to the screen proved a challenge. The story is a classic backstage rise and fall of success entertainment, The Dance of Life from 1929 being the genre's premier early example. The scenario by its title demands the fact of stardom for its inclusion in casting. Otherwise the story of personal decline could as well have been portrayed by Oscar Levant, no stranger to the movie musical, and who had worked previously with Jack Carson here playing studio publicist Matt Libby. The greater casting then concerned Cukor and he wanted Cary Grant, whom he had directed three times before, for the male lead, and went so far as to read the entire script with him. Grant, while agreeing it was the role of a lifetime, was more interested in traveling with wife Betsy Drake, and steadfastly refused the role (he also turned down Roman Holiday and Sabrina).Jaynes, Barbara Grant; Trachtenberg, Robert. Cary Grant: A Class Apart. Burbank, California: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Turner Entertainment. 2004. He was also concerned about Garland's reputation for unreliability. Cukor never forgave Grant for declining the role. The director then suggested either Humphrey Bogart, Edmond O'Brien, Montgomery Clift or Frank Sinatra for the part, but Jack L. Warner rejected both. Garland suggested John Hodiak, with whom she worked in The Harvey Girls eight years earlier, but he was unavailable. Stewart Granger was the frontrunner for a time, but withdrew when he couldn't adjust to Cukor's habit of acting out scenes as a form of direction. Ultimately, James Mason was signed.

The film was originally announced to be made in 3-D but Warner Bros. Pictures later announced that it was to be made in WarnerSuperScope using Warner's new All-Media camera with no mention of 3-D. Filming began on October 12, 1953. As the months passed, Cukor was forced to deal not only with constant script changes but an unstable leading lady plagued by chemical dependencies, significant weight fluctuations, illnesses, and hypochondria. After eight days of filming, including both standard and CinemaScope versions of "The Man That Got Away", studio executives decided the film should be the first Warner Brothers picture to use CinemaScope.

In March 1954, a rough cut was assembled, still missing several musical numbers, and Cukor had mixed feelings about it. When the last scene was shot in the early morning hours of July 28, 1954, Cukor had already left the production and was unwinding in Europe. The long "Born in a Trunk" sequence was added after Cukor left, supervised by Garland's professional mentor Roger Edens.

The first test screening the following month ran to 196 minutes, and despite ecstatic feedback from the audience, Cukor and editor Folmar Blangsted trimmed it to 182 minutes for its New York premiere that October. The reviews were excellent, but Warner executives, concerned the running time would limit the number of daily showings, made drastic cuts without Cukor, who had departed for India to scout locations for Bhowani Junction. At its final running time of 154 minutes, the film lost two major musical numbers and crucial dramatic scenes; Cukor called it "very painful" to watch.

A Star Is Born cost more than $5 million to produce, making it one Hollywood's most expensive films at the time.

Release

On October 22, 1954, it was reported that Warner Bros. had removed 27 minutes from the film, and the new version would be sent back to theaters on November 1.

Following Garland's death in 1969, the uncut film was reissued in Los Angeles and New York.

1983 restoration In October 1981, an Academy tribute to Ira Gershwin was held, in which the musical number "The Man That Got Away" was screened. Following the ceremony, academy president Fay Kinan expressed interest in the removed footage. By courtesy of Warner Bros. studio chairman Robert A. Daly, film preservationist Ronald Haver was granted access into the studio's film vaults. Alongside archivist Don Woodruff and editor Craig Holt, Haver located four minutes of the missing thirty minutes inside a storage facility that belonged to film librarian Merle Ray Harlin, who had been recently convicted of grand theft of motion pictures.Pollock, Dave (August 6, 1983). "More Films Identified in TV Studio Librarian's Cache". Los Angeles Times. Part II, p. 4 – via Newspapers.com. Retrieved December 9, 2020. Over the course of six months, Haver located more missing scenes, including two complete musical numbers: "Here's What I'm Here For" and "Lose That Long Face". which featured black performers. Additionally, the film's stereophonic soundtrack had been found inside the Burbank sound library. However, seven to eight minutes of matching footage to some of the film's dramatic scenes was never located. Rather than scrap these scenes, a choice was made to intersperse the soundtrack with filtered production stills of these sequences, assembled from the archives.

On July 7, 1983, the reconstructed version (with a runtime of 176 minutes) was screened at the Radio City Music Hall. Those in attendance included James Mason and Garland's daughters Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft. Cukor had died the night before a special screening of the film was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on January 24, 1983. In the spring of 1984, the restored film was reissued and shown at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City. For this engagement, an outtake of Garland's performing "The Man That Got Away" (in a different costume and hairstyle) was included. The same year, when PBS was producing its documentary for Great Performances, Judy Garland: The Concert Years, another small piece of footage was found and shown for the first time in the program: Garland singing "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street", which was deleted from the "Born in a Trunk" sequence.

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