A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (21 page)

So did another decision made by Jack Warner that week. On September 16, he announced that the studio was cutting back on the use of
Technicolor in its productions and would henceforth concentrate on the
new Eastman single-strip method of color photography and printing.
Warners and Technicolor had an even longer relationship than Warner
and Bogart: the studio had first used the process back in 1928, when it
was still a two-color system. It had taken up the new Technicolor threecolor process in 1936 and had used it in a succession of beautifully colored films, carefully designed to take full advantage of Technicolor's advanced technology in both photography and printing. But it was an
expensive, cumbersome, and time-consuming system, requiring a camera
that exposed three separate strips of film, with a consequent increase in
production cost due to the additional raw stock and lighting expenses.
Also, it took several days for color "dailies" to be processed and returned
from Technicolor's lab in Hollywood. Over the years the company had
tried to simplify its technique, going so far as to develop, in conjunction
with Eastman Kodak, a single-strip color reversal film called Monopack
(which was nothing more than a 35mm version of Kodachrome), but the
results achieved with this were markedly inferior to the three-strip
method, and producers were loath to use it. Eastman finally introduced
its own single-strip color negative and print stocks for commercial industry use in early 1950. The results were still inferior to Technicolor; but it
was cheaper and faster, and Eastman had the marketing sense to make it
available to any and all comers, letting them process it in their own labs
if so desired and allowing them to give it any name they liked. Warners first used the process in 1952 for The Lion and the Horse, giving it the
imaginative name of WarnerColor. The process was not as versatile or as
subtle as Technicolor; it gave skin tones a harsh quality and had an annoying predilection for the blue end of the spectrum and for reds that
could be overpoweringly garish. These defects could be minimized, however; and Technicolor, seeing the handwriting on the wall, adapted its
technology so that it could deliver to a producer release prints made on
Eastmancolor stock, or use the Eastmancolor negative to make prints
using its own fabled dye-transfer system. By September 1953, when
Warner made his announcement, the studio was using Technicolor only
for its biggest pictures and applying WarnerColor to its more modestly
budgeted features, usually comedies and westerns. Another unspoken factor in Warner's decision was the discovery that the WarnerScope anamorphic lens could not be used with the Technicolor three-strip process;
the resultant images were coarse, grainy, and poorly defined. This had
been discovered almost immediately by Twentieth Century-Fox cameramen, who had the same problem with their first CinemaScope lenses: the
studio had quietly switched over to an Eastman negative for The Robe
and How to Marry a Millionaire, with exhibition prints made by its own
Deluxe Color Laboratories. (Some prints had been made by Technicolor
using the Eastmancolor method, so the films could still be advertised as
being "in Technicolor.") Because of this, there had been a sudden run on
Eastman's stock of color negative in early 1953, resulting in a considerable shortage for two months. By early September this situation had been
rectified, and Warners announced that henceforth WarnerColor would
be the studio's choice. This was just one more example of how the industry was shifting away from its long-established patterns.

Jack Warner made this announcement on September i6, perhaps trying to draw attention away from the fact that A Star Is Bom had missed
another start date. He needn't have worried, for on that day the industry's attention was focused on the Roxy Theatre in New York, where the
long-awaited, much-ballyhooed premiere of the first CinemaScope picture, The Robe, was taking place. For three months prior to the picture's
unveiling, zoth Century-Fox had mounted a massive promotional and
advertising campaign to sell the CinemaScope process to the public and especially the exhibitors. Spyros Skouras was everywhere that summer and
fall, demonstrating, selling the system, making speeches at theater owners' conventions, meeting with heads of theater chains, equipment sup pliers, and bankers and financiers-anyone and everyone who could possibly be of any influence or importance in the task of persuading the industry to take up CinemaScope. The publicity and the coverage reached proportions unseen since the furor over Gone With the Wind back in 1939-40, climaxed by three separate pieces in Life magazine: one on CinemaScope, one on The Robe, and one a profile of Skouras himself. This had been preceded by extensive coverage in all the major news media except television, so that by September 16 more than twelve hundred theaters were equipped and eager to show The Robe in all its CinemaScopic, four-track stereophonic glory. This was a marketing feat of astounding proportions, even by the inflated standards of Hollywood: in less than seven months, Skouras, Zanuck, and Fox had organized, financed, and implemented a three-pronged program of film production, equipment design and manufacture, and theater conversion, all designed to change forever the shape and economics of making and showing films. Whether their efforts would be successful depended to a large degree on critical and public reaction to The Robe itself, and most of the New York critics were impressed with the film and the process, the New York Daily News going so far as to give the picture an eight-star rating-four for the film and four for CinemaScope. It was a relieved and jubilant Spyros Skouras who entered New York's El Morocco for the postpremiere party, waving the Daily News at everyone and shouting exuberantly and endlessly, "We did it! . . . We did it!" The debut was such a success that Variety editorialized: "Showbiz has reached the thrill-jaded end of a long series of near-miracles, including Cinerama, which pulled the chute ... [The] business has gone a million light years since it was `sensational' when the New York Hippodrome got twelve elephants in one scene. What'll they have to do in 1963 to blow off some eyebrows?"

One person in New York who had his eyebrows blown off was Jack Warner's taciturn elder brother Albert, vice-president and treasurer of the company. He was extremely admiring of not only the CinemaScope process but also the manner in which it had been packaged and sold; he was even more impressed as he watched the crowds form lines around the Roxy at all hours of the day and night. By the end of its first week, the picture had set a record for the largest seven-day gross in film history-$267,ooo*-and
Albert, watching all the excitement and the money Tice Robe was generating, began wondering if WarnerScope might not possibly be crushed
under the wheels of the CinemaScope bandwagon.

While Albert watched and pondered in New York, Jack, three thousand
miles away in Burbank, was waiting for the new WarnerScope lenses to
arrive from Germany while at the same time trying to speed up the preproduction work on A Star Is Born. Garland, recording the rest of the songs,
was still trying to lose weight, under a doctor's supervision and with the help
of her "diet pills"-Dexedrine, which kept her nervous and irritable. Luft
had his hands full, trying to cope with her moods and juggling the various
other problems that kept cropping up, not the least of which was Jack
Warner's simultaneously telling him to speed things up and insisting that
they wait for the new lenses. Cukor, Hoyningen-Huene, Allen, and the
other members of the production team were continuing to test fabrics,
paints, and lighting, this time to see how using WarnerColor would affect
the look of the picture. The consensus, according to a letter Cukor wrote
to Hart, was that "Warnercolor is difficult to control and is not true. It's
all in such a state of experimentation that I think it will hurt the picture
more than help. Judy's tests in Technicolor, however, are perfectly charming. She looks young, radiant, and alive. One thing we found from these
tests is that a touch of color near her face, especially a light color, is very
becoming to her."

In the same letter, Cukor brought up some reservations that Luft had
about the dialogue in several early scenes, particularly the spoken asides as
Maine, after waking up in the middle of the night, talks to himself, trying
to remember the name of the girl singer and where she was singing.
According to Cukor, Luft suggested that the dialogue be eliminated and
the scene be played in pantomime. Hart agreed that this might make the
scene work better and told Cukor to eliminate the dialogue. Luft was also
troubled by the long dialogue scene between Norman and Esther in the
"dive" after "The Man That Got Away," which Hart had set entirely in
a booth in the club. It was an important scene, for it is the first time the
audience learns anything of Esther's background and her yearnings, and it
is the first time that Norman is shown in a sympathetic, human light. But
Luft felt that the scene was long, static, and expository-a scene for the
stage, not for motion pictures. Cukor evidently did not agree, for he did
not mention Luft's reservations to Hart.

Instead, he asked Hart to rewrite the Academy Awards humiliation scene, which had remained largely intact from the original; Hart's only
changes were in placing Norman at Vicki's table throughout the ceremony,
instead of having him stagger in drunk midway through her acceptance
speech, and in Norman's speech, which was contrite and begging as opposed to the original's anger, contempt, and ridicule. Cukor evidently liked
the idea of Norman coming in late and asked Hart to reinstate this. He also
asked Hart to.rewrite the dialogue of the presenters, which Hart, largely
unfamiliar with Academy Awards ceremonies, had lifted virtually intact
from the earlier version. In his request to Hart Cukor wrote: "Here's the
transcript of the last Academy `do'. We might come in when the award
is being presented for the best male performance. During this action, we
cut to our principals, indicating-with your usual adroitness-that there is
a place at table for Norman, but so far he has not shown up. We proceed
as is, with the award being given to Esther, with the correct ceremonies.
Then Norman (not in evening clothes, drunk) coming to the dais as in the
old picture."

Hart rewrote the scene, but he didn't do his homework well, for he left
the location of the scene at the Cocoanut Grove. The awards had not been
given out in that type of setting since 1942, America's first year of active
participation in World War II, when the Academy governors decided that
a lavish banquet would be inappropriate and transferred the ceremonies to
a theater-first Grauman's Chinese, then the RKO Pantages on Hollywood
Boulevard. Strangely, despite Cukor's insistence on realism and accuracy in
depicting Hollywood manners and customs, he did not suggest that Hart
change the setting from the Cocoanut Grove to a theater. He may have
figured that the public at large was not familiar with the circumstances of
the presentation and wouldn't notice this anachronism; but by the time the
picture was ready for release, television had covered the awards twice, and
most moviegoers who saw A Star Is Born were puzzled by this jarring
incongruity. (In Hart's rewrite, the only reference to the new reality of
television at the awards was a descriptive phrase describing "a large television screen ... on which is being duplicated the same action as is taking
place on the little stage.")

Cukor was now writing Hart an average of two letters weekly, requesting
new dialogue, asking his advice and opinions on staging the action and bits
of business for the extras, and suggesting changes. Discussing a scene where
Niles is called down to a set because Norman refuses to come out of his
dressing room, Cukor wrote:

I think we have cooked up a very good pictorial ending for [this]. We will
show Oliver driving on to the lot, an atmospheric view of the studio in the
background ... unfinished sets ... streets, etc.... all very picturesque. The
cast and crew, as you will describe them, will be sitting around waiting.
The Company is presumably shooting a waterfront village some place on the
China Sea, with a wonderful junk, sails unfurled, in the background. (This
already exists-kindness of Warner Bros.) Oliver plays the scene with the
director (as in the script), then, to find Norman, he walks behind a large
plaster cyclorama-all these sets are on the exterior. Norman comes out of
his portable dressing room looking like hell, a drink in his hand, dressed in
trousers and in his own shirt. He should present a very discouraging picture,
and look absolutely unfit for work, not drunk, however. (I am reminded of
the time I took Oliver Messel [the costume designer] to the Wardrobe
Department at Metro to meet Jack Barrymore. Oliver had designed a most
dashing costume for "Mercutio," and when he saw a rather seedy gentleman,
well past middle age with the suggestion of a pot belly, rather woozy on beer,
his heart sank, he felt all was lost. Then Jack put on the costume. By some
alchemy, he was now tall, slender, supple and young.) I would like to get
some of that effect here, as Norman comes out of his dressing room-an
insignificant, uninteresting little man. We play the scene with Oliver exactly
as is, down to the very end where he says, "Why Oliver-you're really angry
with me. Can't have that." ... He suddenly rises, puts on a wonderful,
colorful costume, a Marco Polo kind of pirate. A miraculous transformation
takes place. He is young, vibrant, picturesque. He puts one foot on a rope
and swings himself up to the deck of the junk. One should feel that in his
slightly drunken state, this is a very tricky and foolhardy procedure. However,
he makes it. We do a short bit of Douglas Fairbanks action, such as dueling
and fade-out. All this would require just a slight change in the line, "Come
to the set and watch me play a scene." He should, however, speak the speech,
"You look like a crooked bond salesman when you're mad"-and then he
takes off.