| Collector's Corner August 2006
 A
Star Is BornStarring: Judy Garland, James Mason,
Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan, Lucy Marlow, Amanda Blake, Irving Bacon,
Hazel Shermet, Lotus Robb
Directed by: George Cukor
Theatrical release: 1954
DVD release: 2000
Video: Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Released by: Warner Home Video
1950 was a terrible year for Judy Garland. Her second
husband, film director Vincent Minnelli, left her. MGM fired her for her temperamental,
erratic behavior, despite her 14 years with the studio providing hit after hit. In fact,
MGM had helped to create her problems. All the time Garland was with the studio, they told
her she was fat. She yo-yoed through life, hyperactive from diet pills and relaxing with
sleeping pills, all washed down with increasing amounts of alcohol. In 1941, to retain her
image as MGM’s golden girl, the sweet little Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz had
had a back-alley abortion, at the age of 19. In 1950, her life in a shambles, Garland gave
up and tried to take her own life. She was 28 years old.
That’s when 18,000 of Garland’s fans sent her
love notes, inspiring the 4’11" dynamo to put on her trouper’s face and set
about re-creating her career. Garland recognized that she had a four-year-old daughter
(Liza Minnelli) to take care of and an ardent fan base that still cared about her. With
the help of producer Sid Luft (who would later become husband number three), she went back
to her roots: singing to live audiences all over the world. Then, after three years of
extraordinary success on the stage, she and Luft were able to talk Jack L. Warner of
Warner Bros. to give her another shot at the movies. The property they decided on was a
remake of a 1937 film that had been a huge hit: A Star Is Born. Garland had
performed the work as a radio play in 1942, and was convinced she could mount her
Hollywood comeback in the starring role.
A Star Is Born is the story Vicki Lester (Garland),
a young star on the rise who falls in love with another star, Norman Maine, whose sullen
drunkenness is causing his downfall. The tragedy revolves around Maine’s angry envy
of his wife’s success and her steady desire to save her marriage. Because the
Hollywood press had made Garland’s life an open book, no one missed the irony of her
playing the long-suffering spouse when she was actually much more like the Maine
character.
The role of Norman Maine was difficult to fill. Playing a
has-been actor proved too close to home for Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Montgomery
Clift, and Marlon Brando. Cary Grant said he would do it, then bowed out. But James Mason,
recently on a roll in Hollywood, had had experience playing tough, tragic roles in
England, and wasn’t fazed by the prospect.
 George Cukor had already directed 39
films, including such classics as Dinner at Eight, Sylvia Scarlett, The
Women, and Gaslight. He had been nominated for four Oscars -- for
Little Women, The Philadelphia Story, A Double Life, and
Born Yesterday. Moss Hart, one of the day’s most respected playwrights and
directors, wrote the screenplay for A Star Is Born. Add a clutch of songs by Harold
Arlen and Ira Gershwin, and the film had "hit" written all over it.
At the previews, everyone said it was the best film of
Garland’s, Cukor’s, and Mason’s careers. Jack Warner was sure it would
clean up at the Oscars. The premiere, on September 29, 1954, was such a big story that the
entire proceedings were televised. Afterwards, the critics gave it huge endorsements. Time
stated that Garland "gives what is just about the greatest one-woman show in modern
movie history." Bosley Crowther, in the New York Times, told readers to expect
"performances from Miss Garland and Mr. Mason that make the heart flutter and
bleed." Life put Garland on its cover.
It looked as if Judy Garland’s career was finally,
again, on the ascendant.
That’s when Harry Warner, Jack’s brother and the
managing partner in Warner Bros., began hearing grumbles from theater owners that the
film’s 196-minute length was ruining their business: they couldn’t squeeze
enough showings into each day. Harry called for all prints out at theaters to be returned.
He was angry with Cukor and Garland for what he saw as wasteful extravagance -- A Star
Is Born ended up being the most expensive film in Hollywood history up to that date --
and ordered the film cut down to 154 minutes. Rather than allowing Cukor the opportunity
to try to cut it without gutting the flow and the storyline, Warner wrecked the film. Word
of its bastardized state preceded the re-release, and the audience lost interest.
Still, everyone involved hoped that their peers in
Hollywood would overlook Harry Warner’s tampering and recognize the film at the
Academy Awards celebration. A Star Is Born was nominated for Best Actress
(Garland), Best Actor (Mason), Best Color Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Song (Arlen
and Gershwin, for "The Man That Got Away"), Best Scoring of a Musical Picture
(Ray Heindorf), and Best Color Costume Design. Cukor and Hart were ignored.
The night of the awards, Garland hoped for a reprieve for
her film career in the form of a gold statuette. She lay in a hospital bed, having just
given birth to her son, Joey Luft. A closed-circuit TV setup had been arranged so that the
audience in the RKO Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles could watch Garland accept the award
everyone was sure would be hers. Camera crews from all over the world crowded into her
hospital room, prepared for a close-up of Judy’s acceptance speech.
When the award for Best Actress was announced -- Grace
Kelly, for The Country Girl -- a hush spread over Hollywood. Then the rumors began
to spread: MGM, angry that their longtime star had made her greatest film for another
studio, had prevented all their voting members from voting for Garland. Others said that
Garland’s difficult behavior had finally turned off her peers. When A Star Is Born
won no Oscars at all, Groucho Marx sent Garland a telegram saying that it was
"the biggest robbery since Brinks."
 Whatever the cause, no film company
would touch Garland. As fast as it had been reborn, Judy Garland’s movie career was
again over.
Watching A Star Is Born today is a better
experience, largely due to the work of Ronald Haver, a projectionist for the American Film
Institute. While showing all of Cukor’s films for Gavin Lambert’s book On
Cukor, Haver decided to push the AFI to make A Star Is Born one of their
restoration projects. In a painstaking process outlined in Haver’s own fascinating
book, A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration, he
searched for and found enough bits and pieces of the original footage and soundtrack to
nearly reconstruct the entire original film. The destruction of some footage requires
that, for a few acceptable minutes in chapters 13-16, stills are substituted for moving
film. The additional clarity of the storyline is worth the jarring change. Other than
those brief segments, Haver has provided a gorgeous, clean, colorful resurrection of what
one Warner brother had butchered.
In a sad irony, the opening scene of the DVD is a statement
from Warner Home Video dedicating the movie to "the cause of preserving the
world’s motion picture heritage." Harry Warner must be rolling over in his
grave.
At least Warner has given us a worthwhile DVD -- a single
disc with the film on one side, the extras on the other. The latter includes worthwhile
outtakes, the TV broadcast of the film’s premiere, and trailers from the 1937
version, as well as from Barbra Streisand’s poor attempt at a second remake.
For a good look at the life of Judy Garland, watch the
Biography Channel’s episode on August 26 at 9pm EST. Better yet, get the two-DVD
version of Easter Parade, which includes Judy Garland: By Myself, a
stunning profile from the PBS series American Masters. Garland kept trying to write
her memoirs but never finished them, though she took notes about and made recordings of
what she thought were the formative times and events of her life. Documentary director
Susan Lacy uses a voiceover actress to read Garland’s words, and, with the liberal
use of family archives and an honest love for the woman, offers a biography guaranteed to
provoke a few tears. The documentary is frank about Warner Bros.’ actions, which is
probably why Warner Home Video didn’t include it on the Star Is Born DVD. It
would have made a perfect companion to the film.
After the nightmare of A Star Is Born, Garland
returned to the stage, and by the early 1960s was again one of the top concert draws in
the world. In 1963, CBS, which was losing the Sunday-night ratings war to NBC’s
juggernaut, Bonanza, decided to give Garland her own TV show. But despite
critical raves and a loyal audience, CBS wanted more, and dropped her after one season.
By this time, Garland was broke and in arrears with the
IRS, which had seized her house. In 1965 she married again, only to discover that her
husband, Mark Herron, was gay. Six months later, they were divorced. For the next four
years, she kept trying to get out of debt. On March 15, 1969, Garland married husband
number five, Mickey Deans, and settled down in London. But while playing dates in Europe,
she got the first boos and catcalls of her life.
Judy Garland died on June 22, 1969, of an overdose of
Seconal, a potent sleeping pill. A few days later, 22,000 people filed past her open
casket to pay their respects. Mickey Rooney, her costar in 11 movies, was to give the
eulogy, but he couldn’t get through it without breaking into uncontrolled sobbing.
Life imitated art while inverting it: James Mason delivered the eulogy. "Judy’s
great gift was that she could wring tears out of hearts of rock," said Mason.
"She gave so richly and so generously that there was no currency in which to repay
her."
Judy Garland was 47 when she died.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
