A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (23 page)

Further hampering the coordination of the sets and furnishings were
problems in the wardrobe department, which was busy creating the costumes (including thirty separate designs for Garland), all of which, as
pointed out earlier by Hoyningen-Huene, were prime elements in the
overall color scheme of each sequence. Garland had finally shown up for
her costume tests-at least for those costumes that had been designed
and constructed. Garland had a difficult figure to design for. "She was
heavy, she had no waistline, and her hips started under the bustline,"
recalled Walter Plunkett, who had designed for her at MGM. Mary Ann Nyberg, who was designing her clothes for A Star Is Born, found her job
made difficult by the constant revisions of the script and Garland's
weight fluctuations and changes of mind. According to Christopher
Finch in Rainbow:

Never having worked with [Garland] before, [Nyberg] went into the project
with some trepidation and a good deal of excitement.... She thought Judy
one of the most delightful and charming people she had ever met. The star
put their relationship on a chummy girl-to-girl basis.... For the Academy
Award sequence, Nyberg had designed a . . . white dress-intended to
emphasize the innocence of the character. When this garment was completed [Garland] loved it so much that she decided she must keep it for her
personal use. Warning ... Nyberg that she would hate her for what she was
about to do, Judy proceeded to throw a tantrum for the benefit of Jack
Warner and [Cukor]: "Look at this thing! How can you expect me to wear
this! It makes me look like the great white whale." So the white dress was
put away for Judy's future pleasure, and a new one-black with purple
overlay-was made to replace it.

Apocryphal, perhaps, but there were two separate dresses made for the
scene. And with the time involved, the design, the fabrics, and other
materials to be used, and the salaries of dressmakers, pleaters, embroiderers,
bead workers, and fitters, preparing the costumes could well cost thousands
of dollars, even under the watchful eyes of Wright and Heasley.

While sets and costumes were being readied, the script was sent to the
electrical department. Here the size of the sets and time allotted to each
was computed, and from these figures was estimated the number of electricians and lights, the amount of electricity necessary, the time needed to
light the sets, and the equipment that would be needed-what was at the
studio and what would have to be rented from outside. Lighting a film is
an exacting, time-consuming task, especially with a mood-conscious director like Cukor, who wanted to experiment with color and lighting effects
on A Star Is Born.

While this was being worked out, the camera department was going over
its copy of the script, assigning the necessary equipment and allotting the
requisite amount of film, both negative and positive stock. The average
footage for a feature at Warners was approximately loo,ooo feet of negative, 6o,ooo feet of positive for the daily rushes, and the same amount for soundtrack footage. (Even though A Star Is Born was being recorded on
magnetic tape, the editing of the track would be on photographic film.)
Since the picture was to be photographed in Technicolor, the camera and
the film would all be supplied by that company, boosting raw negative
footage to 300,000, since the Technicolor camera exposed three strips of
film simultaneously. Warner Bros. was a thrifty studio; under an order from
Jack Warner himself, the camera and film departments were ordered to
save all unused "short ends" of film for use by the laboratory when making
dissolves and fades. Pat Clark, assigned to the picture to photograph stills
of each scene for publicity, was also schooled in the Warner tradition of
thrift-which in this case meant photographing only one still of each scene
and not each separate camera setup, as was the practice at most other major
studios.

Also assigned to the picture at this time was Alma D. Young as "script
clerk"-the person (usually a woman) who sat beside the director on the
set, timing the scenes, noting which lens was used, any changes in dialogue,
how many takes of a scene were made, which ones the director wanted to
print up and which to hold for printing later if something was unacceptable
in the chosen take, what clothing the performers wore, what props they
were using, and seemingly insignificant details such as the folding of a
pocket handkerchief, the length of a burning candle or cigarette, and which
hand the actors used when gesturing or the way their arms were folded.

This procedure in breaking down and estimating the script was carried
out by every department that would have anything remotely to do with the
production-special effects, process photography, editing, music, location,
props, sound-so that by the first week of October, the sets, costumes,
cameras, lights, technicians, and actors for A Star Is Born were ready and
waiting for Cukor finally to begin photography on the second Monday in
October.

• onday, October 1 2-Columbus Day. Indian Summer was
still keeping the Los Angeles basin pleasant: foggy in the mornings; warm,
even hot, during the day. In Burbank, assistant director Earl Bellamy
checked into the Warner Bros. studio at 6:3o a.m. and, along with the
second assistant director, Warners veteran Russell Llewellyn, began coping
with the first of the many crises that would plague A Star Is Born over the
next nine months. The scenes prepared for the first day of shooting all
involved James Mason as Norman Maine; Garland was not scheduled to
work until the following day. As Mason recalled: "One constantly heard
people saying, `They're supposed to start shooting next week, but Judy'll
never make it.' So it was ironical that I, whose reputation for punctuality
was impeccable, was the one to hold up production for the first couple of
days. My inner ear went on the blink, causing a chronic dizziness, so that
if I turned over in my sleep, I would wake up with a sensation that I was
about to tumble out of bed."

This had happened late Friday, and over the weekend Mason had called
Bellamy, who informed Cukor and the production department. The schedule was juggled so that the first scene to be filmed would be that of Esther
being a stand-in, waving her arm from a train window while snow whirled
about her-the scene that Cukor had cooked up to replace a shorter, less
satiric sequence in Hart's original. At Too, Bellamy and Llewellyn were on
the train set-a permanent fixture on the back lot-checking the crew, the
lighting, and all the necessary equipment and props.

Then the two men split up, Bellamy remaining on the set to attend to
details while Llewellyn went to get Garland's stand-in. Llewellyn relates:
"I'd take her over to the set so they could work out the lighting with her.
Then I'd go by the casting office and get a list of the actors that were
coming through-bit people and the like-and get them over to makeup, make certain they were all there and in the right costume. On that first day,
for that scene, we had three bit players and twenty-six Central Casting
extras and one automobile. The extras were all what we call atmospherethey walked around in the back of the set, or in the foreground, or outside
the stage door, so it would look like a busy movie studio. Then I'd get hold
of a standby driver and tell him to go and stay by the makeup department
or wardrobe department and make sure that our people were all brought
out to the set on time. Then I'd go over to Judy Garland's dressing room
and see how things were coming along there."

Jack Warner had given Garland Bette Davis's old dressing room, and on
this first morning there was a memo from him on her dressing table:

Dear Sid and Judy:

Now that the picture is underway, we all feel, and I know you do too, that
we are embarked upon a very important event, one of which we can all be
proud. The culmination will tell its own story. Every good wish to you both.

Sincerely,
Jack

Garland was due on the set at io:oo, so she had been in her dressing
room since 7:30, having her hair done and being made up by her makeup
man, Del Armstrong, a free-lance who'd spent years at MGM, where he
had specialized in working on Lana Turner. For A Star Is Bom, he had been
hired by Luft as an independent department head. "Gordon Bau was the
head of Warners' makeup at the time," recalled Armstrong, "but Sid had
told me, `It's a big picture, and you're in complete charge.' So what I did
was take a unit of the makeup department and I'd put in a request each
day for what help I would need, through them. So I didn't take their power
away.

"Now, on A Star Is Born, I'd get to Judy's dressing room around seven,
which is when she's supposed to be there. And the hair stylist would be
there with me, and we'd get ourselves some coffee and wait for her to come
in. Nine times out of ten, she wouldn't be there at seven o'clock, but on
this first day she was on time. We had the makeup set up in her room, as
against the makeup department. She didn't want to go into the makeup
department. That was a throwback to the old MGM days, because none
of the big stars would go into the makeup department; we'd always go to
them in their dressing rooms-they had very elaborate dressing rooms. So Judy came in and we started. Usually the hair stylist would work on her first,
put her hair up. While that's going on I'd sit in the other room and read
the paper or have coffee. It could be an hour-just Judy, the hairdresser,
and the wardrobe girl, and you could hear the three of them giggling and
talking and visiting, comparing notes about what happened last night, or
what didn't happen.

"Then I'd take over. The whole process shouldn't take more than two
hours, even today. My approach to making up a star is simple: I make them
up so that if they look good to you, to the eye, then there's no reason why
they won't look good to the camera. With Judy, there was one problem-it
was the same problem Lana had-no eyebrows. Because in the early days
of glamour, they used to tweeze them quite a bit so they could make
exaggerated shapes, and if you tweeze your eyebrows too much, then they
just don't grow back. So I had some hair lace, like for a mustache or wigs,
and I had some eyebrows made for Judy for this picture. You couldn't just
pencil them in, because there's no dimension. A pencil is flat-pencilling
is fine for a still picture, but for a motion picture people are turning their
heads and you can see that it's flat. So I put these eyebrows on Judy."

While Garland was being made up, Cukor, Gene Allen, and HoyningenHuene had all arrived on the train set and were working out the blocking
and the camera movements and fine-tuning the lighting. Cukor had been
greeted on the set with two memos. One was from Jack Warner, telling
him:

Delighted we are getting underway ... and want to wish you every success
and much happiness in the making of A Star Is Born. If there is anything
I can do to aid you, just call me on 238 or 239, my office numbers.

Best wishes,

Sincerely,
Jack

The other memo was from the camera department, reminding Cukor and
Winton Hoch that the image should be composed for the new 1:75 ratio,
since the picture would be released in wide-screen. To facilitate this, a
rectangular box had been etched into the camera viewfinder in the correct
proportion, making it easier for Hoch to see where the top and the bottom
of an image would be when the picture was exhibited in theaters. The
memo reassured them: "Don't worry about the fact that the camera is picking up more picture than we need. This will be eliminated in the release
prints as Technicolor will print the image to conform to this ratio."

It took nearly two hours to light the set. At 10:00 Cukor finished
rehearsing action with the stand-in; the camera movements were all fixed,
and the bit people and the extras had been rehearsed in their action. The
time had come to film the scene. Bellamy sent Llewellyn to tell Garland
that they were ready. She arrived on the set at io:1o, nervous but jovial,
showing Cukor the bracelet that Luft had given her that morning, inscribed: "Columbus discovered America on October 12, 1492. Judy Garland began principal photography on A Star Is Born on October 12, 1953.
With all my love-Sid." Garland wanted to wear it in the scene, Cukor
agreed, and they began rehearsal.

The scene had been added to the script verbatim from Cukor's description to Hart, but it lacked details. So for the next half-hour, as Cukor
rehearsed Garland, he also improvised dialogue for the bit players acting
the parts of director, cameraman, assistant director, and wardrobe girl.
Cukor elaborated on his working methods on a set: "The first three or four
days on the set I'm rather shaky, but I plunge into my work just the same.
... On those shaky first days ... I'm not absolutely confident ... everyone's
nervous at first, I suppose.... When I work the atmosphere has to be
happy, cheerful ... amusing and funny.... That doesn't mean there aren't
all sorts of crises, but I will not put up with strain-I can't think if I'm
distracted. And I will not have unpleasant pressures on the set. Unless I'm
sympathetic with people, I cannot function. The climate on the set includes relations with the actors, and with everybody, in fact. The hours are
very long. You've got to be perfectly natural about the whole thing. No
patronizing, no putting on airs. You're on the set under great strain from
eight in the morning until seven at night ... but you can't spend that long
day with a cathedral hush over the whole place. I don't mind noise ... I
like everybody to be working in a perfectly relaxed manner.... All this looks
rather permissive to an outsider, but there is great discipline behind it all.
... That's the wonderful thing about a movie set-at one moment it seems
pandemonium, then suddenly everybody is doing his job, and doing it very
well, and it all falls into place. People know where they're supposed to be
and what they're supposed to do."