Aging alcoholic star discovers young talent, they fall in love, she eclipses him, he kills himself; if you’ve seen one version of A Star is Born, you’ve seen ‘em all. This 1954 film is a musical remake of the 1937 original1, which producer Sid Luft conceived as a comeback vehicle for his wife Judy Garland. Luft approached George Cukor to direct, and Cukor, after initially declining2, decided to do it to work with the dynamo Garland. That was a good call, because Garland is incandescent in the role of Esther Blodgett-slash-Vicki Lester, while James Mason as Norman Maine proves a worthy co-star.
The premier of A Star is Born ran to a brazen 196 minutes3, and though reactions were positive, Warner Bros. cut it down to 154 minutes. That’s the version most people saw in theaters. Then, in 1983, a “reconstructed” version was released that recovered much of the cut material, restoring the movie to 176 minutes. While audio was available for all the recovered scenes, for some the film had been lost; in these cases, the producers decided to play the original audio over production stills like it was a Ken Burns documentary.
I did not enjoy watching three hours of A Star is Born, but while writing this column, all I could remember about the film was how incredible Judy Garland was. I’m giving it a six, but watch Garland sing “The One That Got Away” and remember that she’s forever and always a ten.
Rating: 6/10, somewhere between the shallow and the deep end.
Cast and Crew
Last we saw James Mason, he was getting squeezed out of top billing in Julius Caesar by Marlon Brando. Here, he sizzles as Norman Maine, both when he’s romancing Esther with his loutish charm and when his insecurities and alcoholism take over. Cary Grant was initially offered the lead role, and yeah, he would’ve been great, but Mason’s performance is also iconic.
I’m glad we’ll be seeing Mason more in this column, but it won’t be for any of his three upcoming major roles: Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and the villains in North by Northwest (1959) and Lolita4 (1962). No, we’ll have to wait until the ‘70s to see Mason, and by then he’ll have transitioned to supporting roles. I bet he’ll be good, though.
The screenplay for A Star is Born was adapted by Moss Hart. Hart was more famous as a librettist, working for a decade with playwright George S. Kaufman5 while also plying his trade with, well, pretty much everyone else making music for theater at the time.6 But maybe the most important thing to remember about him is that he isn’t Lorenz Hart, an unrelated lyricist who most famously worked with Richard Rodgers on plays like “Babes in Arms.”7
Yes, this film was directed by George Cukor. That’s the George Cukor who did Gone with the Wind8, and The Philadelphia Story (1940), and oh right, Gaslight (1944), and then Adam’s Rib (1949), and also Born Yesterday (1950), and wait, there’s more? Yeah. We’ll get two more cracks at Cukor in this column so we’ll push a thorough discussion of him to the future. That’s good, because today we’re going to be busy…
The Trivia
…talking about Judy Garland. She’s so good in this movie that, when she lost the Oscar to Grace Kelly9, Groucho Marx stated that it was “the biggest robbery since Brink’s.” It’s also one of Garland’s last performances, as her struggles with drugs, alcohol, and her weight limited her to only three live-action films over the last 15 years of her life. We’ll see her once more, so we’ll take this space to look back at the rosier part of her career.
Garland’s real name was Frances Gumm and she was from Grand Rapids, Minnesota.10 She was the child of vaudevillians and hit the circuit herself with her two older sisters, working as an act called “The Gumm Sisters.” That name sucked so they eventually changed it to “The Garland Sisters” and Frances/Judy got snapped up by MGM and Louis B. Mayer when she was 13.
MGM cultivated a “girl-next-door” persona for Garland, and some of her biggest hits were pairings with child star Mickey Rooney. Their first together was Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937), which led to roles for Garland in Rooney’s Andy Hardy series of movies. But then came Dorothy Gale, the lead role in The Wizard of Oz (1939), and with it a Juvenile Oscar11 and superstardom.
Here are some other Garland flicks to know:
Her movies with soon-to-be-2nd-husband Vincente Minnelli, most notably Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).12 That one had “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
The Harvey Girls (1946), but just for the song “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”13
Her movies with Gene Kelly, which included 1942’s For Me and My Gal (which was Kelly’s debut) and 1950’s Summer Stock (with the song “Get Happy”).14 Summer Stock was her last movie before A Star is Born, a layoff borne in part by her mental health and addiction struggles.15
Judy also had some noteworthy romances. Her early years had her paired with bandleader Artie Shaw16, songwriter Johnny Mercer, and her first husband, David Rose.17 In 1945, Garland married Vincente Minnelli and had Liza Minnelli. When that relationship fizzled, Garland married producer Sid Luft, with whom she had daughter Lorna Luft.
Odds and Ends
Dorothy Parker—yeah, that Dorothy Parker—was one of the writers of the original A Star is Born…Norman Maine name-drops Ellen Terry, a late 18th century British stage actress who had a “paper courtship” with George Bernard Shaw…Esther asks Norman if he’s “had enough, as the Republicans used to say”; that refers to the 1946 Congressional Republican slogan, “had enough?”, which referenced how the Democrats had wielded power since 1930…A newsreel mentions Marilyn Rich, the helicopter girl; she’d dangle from rings hanging off a helicopter, which people really liked (I think there were fewer things to do in the past)…Esther wins an Oscar in the movie but Judy Garland went home empty-handed for her performance; that wrong was partially righted when Renée Zellweger won one for biopic Judy (2019).
Oh, and yeah, A Star is Born’ll be back in this column.
Though it shared a few similarities with What Price Hollywood? (1932), a film from director George Cukor. The plot of that movie: Aging alcoholic star discovers young talent, they fall in love, she eclipses him, he kills himself.
Because, y’know, he had kinda already made that movie in 1932.
That’s 15 minutes longer than Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Yes, Humbert Humbert is the villain of Lolita.
Including on “You Can’t Take It With You,” whose film adaptation won Best Picture in 1938.
Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, oh my!
A Rodgers and (Lorenz) Hart song, “You Took Advantage of Me,” is actually part of the “Born in a Trunk” medley that Garland sings in A Star is Born.
Well, until he got fired and replaced by Victor Fleming.
For her performance in The Country Girl.
No one cares about Grand Rapids, MN, but it happens to be in Itasca County, home of Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi. “Itasca” comes from the Latin for “veritas caput,” meaning “truth” and “head,” referring to the source of the Mississippi River.
Technically, she was given the Juvenile Oscar for both The Wizard of Oz and another Mickey Rooney movie from that same year, Babes in Arms. If you read the Moss Hart part real close, you’ll remember that Babes in Arms was adapted from a Rodgers and Hart musical (no, not that Hart). Also, no, we don’t do Juvenile Oscars any more.
Beyond Meet Me in St. Louis, they also did The Clock (1945, Garland’s first dramatic role and first starring role where she didn’t sing), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), and The Pirate (1948).
The Harvey Girls are interesting. Fred Harvey created what is sometimes called America’s first restaurant chain, opening eateries along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. The Harvey Girls were unmarried women “of good character” between the ages of 18 and 30 who staffed these eateries. As they were often the only girls around in the West, they were a big boost to business.
Kelly was also supposed to star with Garland in Easter Parade (1948), but he broke an ankle and Fred Astaire came out of retirement to replace him. Just as I thought: Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, totally interchangeable. Easter Parade had music from Irving Berlin, including the title song about an “Easter bonnet with all the frills on it.”
Garland was supposed to star in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), but her issues got her fired and replaced by Betty Hutton.
Though Shaw eloped with Lana Turner instead. Bandleaders, man.
David Rose is most famous for the Billboard #1 hit “The Stripper”; you’ve heard that one, even if you don’t think you have.