A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (16 page)

The film was as big a success in the United States as it was in England,
leading to the traditional offers from Hollywood. Being ambitious, Mason
took the plunge. As he put it, "I had a clear sense of my own status in the
English entertainment world. . . . I knew the pecking order: Laurence
Olivier, Rex Harrison, David Niven, Michael Redgrave, Richard Greene, Trevor Howard.... I also knew that the number per year of good British
films could be counted on the fingers of little more than one hand. Flukes
like The Seventh Veil were rare. I thought it more than likely that I might
have to go on knocking myself out in an unbroken line of banalities,
whereas the Hollywood people were liable to be much more impressed by
my highly touted popularity; I would extend my range, have a wider
choice." Ironically, it was fellow countryman Carol Reed who gave Mason
the opportunity to extend his range in the last film Mason made before
leaving for Hollywood in 1947: Odd Man Out. Mason's portrayal of an
Irish rebel leader hunted by the police, subtle and intensely affecting,
overnight gave him international credibility as a performer of power and
sophistication. He was no longer considered just a smooth, sexy villain but
respected as an actor of enormous range and sensitivity.

In Hollywood in 1953, he was, as he mentioned, "not getting anywhere
very fast." He had appeared in a number of high-budget films in showy
roles, notably as the real-life spy Cicero in Five Fingers and as German
General Erwin Rommel in The Desert Fox in a much-praised portrayal. Of
this early period he recalled: "On the one hand I shrank from being
typecast or of becoming the long-term thrall of a major studio; on the other
I wished to involve myself in filmmaking of every variety and ultimately to
become my own producer and my own director or writer ... obviously this
would not happen overnight. First I must rise to a position of some power,
and this could only be done by appearing in one successful picture after
another. Though it may be hard to believe, this was my aim throughout
my career in Hollywood; unfortunately my taste guided me unerringly to
projects which were artistically unadventurous and financially hazardous, so
my American career started with a run of five failures."

Carol Reed once again came to his rescue, with the meaty role of a
German who lives by his wits between the East and West Berlin sectors;
hence the title The Man Between. This role and Mason's Brutus in MGM's
Julius Caesar (the two films were released within weeks of each other in
mid-1953) brought forth glowing notices from the critics, and suddenly
Mason found himself very "hot," sought after for roles in several major
films.

"During these years," he related, "I practically ran the gamut of the
Hollywood agencies ... but I was best served by Charlie Feldman's agency.
Charlie himself was a man of whom it was easy to become very fond. He
was a generous, warm-hearted person. I had absolute faith in his judgment, so when he called to tell me about A Star Is Born, I thought that it would
be exactly my cup of tea. The first version with Janet Gaynor and Fredric
March was a superb little film, an unpretentious and credible Hollywood
story; I had known for some time that Judy Garland and her husband Sid
Luft were planning a remake, and now here they were with a healthylooking contract with Warner Bros. and a new scenario by one of the top
playwrights of the time, Moss Hart. When you read a good script, and this
was a really beautiful, witty script of those times, you can't help thinking
that this could make a wonderful film....

"I was very fond of Judy ... as a moviegoer I had admired her so much
from a distance for such a long time. I got to know her very well when I
first arrived in Hollywood, because one of the first films I appeared in at
MGM was Madame Bovary, which was directed by her husband at that
time, Vincente Minnelli, and I developed a fond relationship with her.
... I loved and responded to her sense of humor.... She was a sharp, witty
woman who as a child star at MGM had gotten into the unfortunate habit
of taking things like Dexedrine to sharpen her up in the morning and
sedatives to help her sleep at night. She was a party-goer, almost too eager,
some may have thought, to join whoever was at the piano and sing along,
while her hostess made sure that her medicine cabinet was safely locked.
It was on account of this that Judy had made a bad name for herself in a
commercial town like Hollywood where reliability is the big thing.

"She and Sid were kindred spirits, both mavericks, and the feeling in
Hollywood at the time about A Star Is Born was very negative. Judy told
me later that Arthur Freed, who had produced a number of her films at
MGM, had said of her and Luft in the presence of one of her friends,
'Those two alley cats can't make a picture.' In Hollywood, no one would
expect A Star Is Born with Judy Garland to be a smooth or easy ride. I was
by no means the front runner for the part of Norman Maine; I know that
the part was offered to Humphrey Bogart ... and to Cary Grant ... and
there were probably others, but in the end it came to me and I grabbed
it smartly before it slipped away."

Mason's "grabbing it before it slipped away" was a blessing for the film,
for few performers of his caliber would have had the maturity to allow
themselves to be subordinate to Judy Garland, to sit and react while she
sang to them, and generally be upstaged by her. This prospect is probably
what kept Cary Grant from accepting the role, even more than the impasse
over salary. Actors' egos are fragile things, and it is to Mason's credit that he was able to sublimate his own for what he saw to be an outstanding role,
even if it did mean playing second fiddle to Garland. His romantic appeal
and his innate sensitivity would also add another dimension to the part of
Maine, which, as written, offered no explanation for his alcoholic decline.
Mason's gifts were such that he could communicate Maine's inner turmoil
without an excessive amount of expository, soul-searching dialogue; and his
considerable personal charm and magnetism would add greatly to the
character's appeal.

Mason agreed to do the film in early May, just about the time that Jack
Warner, luxuriating in the blockbuster that House of Wax was turning out
to be, announced that his studio was taking up the Natural Vision option
and would use the process for twenty-two more films, among them the
Cukor-Garland-Mason A Star Is Born. At the same time he formally announced the introduction of WarnerScope (described as "a newly perfected process for the projection of all motion pictures, which has been
under development by our studio for some years now"), adding one more
name to the confusing welter of Scopes, Visions, and Ramas that bedeviled
producers and exhibitors alike.

Meanwhile, the preproduction work on A Star Is Born began to move
into high gear. Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin had finished their work on
the score in late April. They had written twelve songs instead of the seven
requested by Hart. In addition to "Gotta Have Me Go With You" and
"The Man That Got Away," there was a short jingle, "Trinidad Coconut
Oil Shampoo," to be used in the sequence where Esther does a voice-over
for a television commercial. Three additional songs, "Green Light Ahead,"
"I'm Off the Downbeat," and "Dancing Partner," were all written as
alternatives for the "big number" that Hart had indicated to show the
transformation of Esther the singer into Vicki the star. The "song on
recording stage" for the marriage proposal sequence had become "Here's
What I'm Here For," while the "honeymoon song in motel" was called
"It's a New World." The Malibu beach house number, in which Esther
tries to cheer her despondent husband, emerged as "Someone at Last," a
parody of all movie production numbers. For the finale of the picture,
Esther/Vicki's appearance at the Shrine Auditorium, there would be a
reprise of "It's a New World." Additionally, Hart had added a new scene
which necessitated an actual film-within-a-film production number: "Lose
That Long Face" was designed to frame the dramatic scene between
Esther and Oliver Niles in which, after singing the number on camera, she breaks down in her dressing room and confides her doubts about being able
to save Norman from himself. When Niles promises to put Norman back
to work, she goes out and finishes the song.

Seven songs was not many; the average musical of the time contained
at least ten. The previous year, loth Century-Fox's With a Song in My
Heart had an all-time high of twenty-five, while MGM's Singin' in the Rain
had thirteen and Warners' own Lullaby of Broadway offered twelve. That
this seeming paucity of music was of some concern to Jack Warner was
evidenced in a memo from his executive assistant Walter McEwan, who
commented in his notes on the first draft of A Star Is Born: "As per your
instructions regarding the possibility of adding one or two more songs, I
looked, perhaps overzealously, for places where the screenplay might be
shortened in order to make room for more music."

From McEwan, the script was sent to the timer, whose job it was to
estimate the approximate running time of the finished film. Timing a script
is an exacting task, requiring the ability to visualize the scenes of a script,
working them out as to camera movement, staging, and dialogue delivery,
all calculations based on a knowledge of cinema mechanics and the style
of the particular director. The timer goes over each scene with these factors
in mind and stopwatch in hand; an expert with years of experience can
usually time a script to within a minute of the eventual running time. But
Jack Warner didn't believe in having more people than necessary on the
payroll, so script timing was left in the hands of the film editors. In the case
of A Star Is Bom, the script was given to William Holmes to estimate; he
came up with an approximate running time of ninety-five minutes, exclusive of musical numbers. There was one fallacy in his estimate, however:
George Cukor had never worked at the studio before, and Holmes was
unfamiliar with his style. And Cukor's style was leisurely-long takes,
complex staging and blocking, with the emphasis on the actors and their
reactions to the script and to each other. A scene that might take two and
a half minutes to play under Raoul Walsh or William Wellman might take
three and a half to four minutes under Cukor. Holmes was not aware of
this, so his estimate of ninety-five minutes was off the mark by a wide
margin. The original version of A Star Is Born, directed by Wellman, ran
i io minutes, and Hart's new screenplay didn't shorten the story at all-in
fact, his revision in the first half lengthened it. And the seven musical
numbers, each running four to five minutes, would add approximately
another thirty minutes to the picture's length. Add to this Cukor's typical meticulous attention to detail, nuance, and mood and A Star Is Born could
conceivably end up running two hours and forty-five minutes. An experienced producer, one familiar with Cukor's style, would have detected
this immediately. Luft, however, was not an expert in these matters, so it
evidently never occurred to him. Warner should have known, but he seems
not to have mentioned it. The evidence at hand-the memo from McEwan-indicates that Warner wanted to shorten the script, to tighten and
condense it to make room for more musical numbers.

Cukor's concern was to make the script work in terms of character, to
flesh out the relationships and to fill in more detail in the staging of
individual scenes. One of his early suggestions to Hart concerned revamping the scene of Esther's first day of work on a sound stage. Hart had
Esther doing a "hand insert," a close-up of her arm standing in for a
star's and throwing a glass of champagne, evidently into an actor's face.
Cukor wrote a long letter to Hart outlining his idea for the expansion of
this scene:

The other day when I talked to you on ze telephone, I volunteered to write
the description of a new scene which we are substituting for scene 57, the
hand insert scene. But what the hell! You got [all those thousands] for
writing the screenplay, didn't you? In my poor, halting words I will attempt
to describe the action which we propose to do in scene 57.... We show
a movie set going full blast, with the usual array of personnel. We should
give the impression that an important scene is going to be shot.

It is a hot California (Burbank) day and the crew are in various states of
undress, T shirts, etc. The set is a huge train shed (just a wee bit smaller than
the New York Central station). It has three long tracks, on two of which are
six-car trains. Through the open doors of the shed a long, picturesque tenement street can be seen. Since this (the tenement street) is not the set that
is to be shot, there is the usual paraphernalia parked around-portable dressing
rooms, lights, etc.

It is Esther's first day of work under her new contract, her first opportunity.
Naturally she is very much on the qui vive. The assistant director takes her
to the director. This action is far enough away so that we don't hear the
instructions that the director is giving her, but he is pointing to the train coach.
Esther drinks in his instructions and nods her head, all eagerness and tension.
She gets into the "mock-up" of a railroad coach. (I will explain: This is a regular
railroad car, the end of which is cut off so the camera can give the impression
of being inside the car.) A wardrobe woman helps Esther into a large and very
heavy fur coat, and she seats herself next to an open window.

We cut to the outside of the same coach where we see Esther, having taken
her place at the window.... We also now see the reason for the fur coat. About
a quarter of the outside of the railroad car in which Esther sits is all fixed up
for a big snow scene. The glass is cloudy, the roof of the car is covered with
snow, and there is snow on the ground as well. Icicles hang on the window.
... The technicians are hard at work, the lights have been adjusted, and there
is a sound effect that indicates that the train is about to start. We see the
special effects man with a pipe, feeding the steam up into the scene as though
it were coming from under the car. The director says "Camera!" Our camera
now slowly trucks up past the prop camera, and we photograph the scene that
the prop camera is presumably getting. Out of a beclouded, ice-frosted window
of a snow-covered train, a fur-coated arm is thrust through the window. In its
hand is a lace handkerchief which it begins to wave. The steam is coming up
most convincingly . . . the sound effects of the train chugging away, etc.
... Suddenly the director's voice yells "Cut!"