A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (24 page)

This was exactly what happened on the set of A Star Is Born.
Rehearsal continued until 11:20; at 11:25, Cukor called "Action" and
Winton Hoch guided the massive Technicolor camera in a dolly movement from a medium long shot of the exterior of the train to a close shot of the
window, through which Esther's face is seen, thereby spoiling the shotthe joke being that stand-ins' faces are not allowed to be seen. This was
photographed five separate times; various things kept going wrong. The
fifth take, which lasted 44 seconds, was satisfactory, and the camera was
shifted to another setup to photograph other angles. The scene took all day
to complete; by 5:20, when Garland was dismissed, one minute and fortynine seconds of film had been shot, in nine separate setups, covering one
and a half pages of script.

When the scene was finished and the cast dismissed, Cukor and his staff
moved to the next day's set, Esther's room at the Oleander Arms Motel.
Here Cukor gave instructions to Hoch on the lighting and to Earl Bellamy
on the staging and conferred with Hoyningen-Huene and Gene Allen on
the color and mood of the scene. By the time these matters had been
discussed and roughed out, and everybody had their instructions for the
next day, it was close to 8:oo. At the end of the first day of actual shooting
on A Star Is Born, Cukor had filmed one script scene and Warner Bros.
had spent approximately $25,000 for the day's work, an amount which it
would continue to spend every production day until all 123 scenes of the
script had been photographed.

Mason's illness was waning, but he was still in no condition to work, so
the second day of shooting found the company working in the interior set
of Esther's bedroom at the Oleander Arms Motel, a detailed copy of an
actual structure on the corner of Crescent Heights Boulevard and Fountain
Avenue in Hollywood. This set included Esther's room and an exterior
terrace and stairs leading up to the second level of the building, where
Danny McGuire and the rest of the Glenn Williams Orchestra were
quartered. Later in the shooting, the company would go on location to the
actual apartment building to film exterior shots of Esther's goodbye to the
musicians after her decision to quit the band and take Norman up on his
offer to get her a screen test with Niles. But on October 13, the only scenes
to be filmed were short silent bits: one of Esther in bed, tossing and turning
in the darkness and anguishing over what to do about Maine's offer; one
of her getting out of bed and leaving her room to go upstairs to tell
Danny of her decision to stay in Hollywood and try for a screen career; and
shots of Esther later in the sequence, after the band has left, washing her
hair while waiting for Norman to call.

Cukor wanted the early part of this sequence-Esther in bed-to be in almost total darkness, with only a glimmer of moonlight coming in through
the window, just enough to illuminate Garland's face. Here, Cukor had his
first bit of difficulty with Winton Hoch, who refused to light the shot as
instructed, telling Cukor that the low level of light he wanted would never
register with sufficient density to get a quality image with the Technicolor
process. As Cukor later remarked, "some cameramen get into all kinds of
habits and one has to watch them very carefully [so that they] won't put
in all sorts of boring shadows and things like that. You have to give these
men their head because they're artists-you have to stimulate them, not
let them fall back on habits." Even with Cukor's prodding, Hoch ended
up doing it his way, with the director's reluctant approval.

The sequence was complex only in the lighting, going from the dimly
lit interior of the room to a combination moonlight/early dawn exterior as
Esther leaves her room to go upstairs to the second floor. Cukor had staged
it all in a single shot, and after spending almost three hours arguing about
the lighting and setting the lights, he and Hoch took the first shot at i i :oo,
then did it twice more. After a break for lunch, they resumed work, this
time shooting Esther washing her hair. This had to be shot in medium close
shots, close shots, and close-ups of Esther's face registering anxiety at
Norman's failure to call-all of which were necessary to give the film editor
sufficient footage to build the sequence to Cukor's satisfaction. Each time
one of these shots was taken, or retaken because of some technical or
staging deficiency, Garland's hair would have to be rewashed and reset,
which was done a total of eight times.

The sequence was finally completed at 3:20 in the afternoon, and the
company immediately moved to the first of the many studio exterior locations. The Warner studio buildings, streets, back lot, and sound stages
would all be utilized as the fictional Oliver Niles Studio. Cukor usually
preferred to shoot his scenes in continuity-that is, as they occurred in the
script-but Mason's illness precluded that, so a major jump in the story
progression now had Esther on her first tour of the studio with publicity
head Matt Libby after she has signed her contract. The script called for
her to follow him across a high, narrow catwalk between stages into a
projection room to meet Niles. Esther Blodgett-like Judy Garland-was
terrified of heights, and Cukor had inserted this bit of business as Esther,
not wanting to let Libby know of her acrophobia, grasps on to the side
railings and, knees buckling, does a Groucho Marx-like lope out of the
scene. It was the kind of self-deprecating comedy that Garland was so adept at; the catwalk itself was only about nine feet off the ground, but the
photographic angle would make it appear thirty or more feet up.

For this scene, her first with another performer, Garland was joined by
Jack Carson as Libby. The two had worked together once before for
Warner Bros.: ironically, it was on stage at the downtown Warner Theatre
in Los Angeles in the early 1930s, when she was still Baby Gumm of the
Gumm Sisters and he was half of the comedy duo of Willock and Carson.
After her hairstyle and her costume had been changed, Garland and Carson
did two takes of the uncomplicated shot, and by 4:30 work had been
completed for the day.

For Bellamy and Russ Llewellyn, however, work would not end for
several more hours, as the next day's shooting was on location in Hollywood.
After Esther has quit the band at Maine's urging, she waits for his call,
which doesn't come; her money gone, she is forced to do the one thing she
had vowed she would "never, never" do again-take a job as a waitress.
Even more humiliating, she works as a carhop in a drive-in restaurant. For
this, Bellamy and Cukor had chosen the real thing-Robert's Drive-In at
the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Cahuenga Street, in the heart of
Hollywood. Recalls Bellamy: "Mr. Cukor liked the naturalness-he liked
to film the actual thing. He felt it gave reality to the situation. We went
out there the night before we were to shoot: he would look over the place
and give us a rough walk-through so that the cameraman could line up and
light with the stand-ins; we would have discussions with the art director and
the cameraman so that everybody had a chance to put in their suggestions
as to how to make the scene look good-you know, take advantage of the
way the place looked-as well as everybody tossing around ideas for staging.
So that by the time we left the place the night before, everybody had a good
clear idea of what we were going to be doing the next day."

The next morning, Bellamy was at the studio at 6:30, getting everything
organized, seeing that the twenty-five trucks of equipment, which included
portable dressing rooms, costume and makeup vans, and crew vehicles, were
loaded and on their way by 7:oo. "I'd see that everything was under control,
then I'd leave one assistant at the studio to load the cast into cars, get them
out to us by eight-thirty. I would go out there with the first car that left
the studio and usually be there before any of the buses left the studio with
the crew, so that I could see if the location was all set for us, see if the police
had arrived. I would be there when Mr. Cukor arrived and I'd have the
street ready, knowing what he wanted, and the location prepared and the extras would be there-they'd usually get there about the same time
as the crew. While the crew was getting ready and the cameras were being
set up, we'd get the extras in position and have the stand-ins rehearsed so
that by the time Garland got there, all we had to do was walk her through
the action, then rehearse it and shoot it."

Due to the professionalism of the crews and the simplicity of the scene
itself, the master takes were done fairly rapidly-only eight shots were
needed to set up the necessities of the scene. But when it came time to
film Garland's close-ups as she recited the menu of varied hamburgers,
fourteen separate takes were needed, due to flubbed lines, technical deficiencies, and assorted noises-Hollywood traffic, sirens, horns, the crowds
who had gathered to watch the proceedings, and an occasional stray plane.
Even with all the distraction and retakes, shooting was finished before
lunch; and then the entire company-trucks, crew, extras-took the new
Hollywood Freeway to downtown Los Angeles, 626 Spring Street, a seedy
little dive called the Bomba Club. Here they filmed sequences of Esther
unsuccessfully trying to get a singing job. By the end of the day, they had
added another five minutes of film and had shot an additional three and
a half pages of script.

While this was going on in Hollywood, Albert Warner in New York was
reading the Variety headline that proclaimed a $3 million gross for The
Robe after less than two weeks in release in fewer than two hundred
theaters. This was an astonishing figure; nothing like it had been seen
since the days of Gone With the Wind in 1939-40, and Albert Warner
knew that The Robe, while a good movie, was no Gone With the Wind.
It was the CinemaScope trademark that was the big attraction; it was a
star in itself, like Cinerama: people were going to see it, and the picture
was secondary. As the money continued to roll in on The Robe, Warner
watched with dismay as the costs of A Star Is Born began to escalate far
beyond what had been budgeted; the picture could conceivably end up
costing 3 to 4 million dollars. Unlike his brother Jack, Albert Warner was
no gambler. Nor was he convinced that Judy Garland's renewed popularity would carry over into films, filling movie theaters across the country to
capacity for several weeks-and that, he figured, was what it would take
to recoup the costs of A Star Is Born. In the technology-crazy movie
market of late 1953, even the most atrocious little "gimmick" movies were outgrossing the best "flat" films. Warner decided to discuss the
matter with his older brother, Harry, the president of the firm. The eldest
Warner had little tolerance or affection for his younger brother Jack;
their strained relationship was common knowledge. It was an old sibling
rivalry: Harry resented Jack's being accorded favored status by his mother
and father just because he was the youngest. Harry, dour, conservative,
and withdrawn, was annoyed by Jack's flamboyance, his ebullience, his
gregariousness, his love of publicity, and his reckless ways with the company money. Jack, for his part, respected and feared his eldest brotherfeared him to the point that when Harry would journey from New York
for one of his infrequent forays to the studio, Jack would not enter the
commissary if he knew Harry was still dining. So when Albert brought up
the subject of A Star Is Born to Harry, pointing out his reservations about
the picture's cost and its potential popularity, Harry listened. He too had
noted the amazing success of The Robe and CinemaScope. Early on, he
had made inquiries about buying into it on behalf of Warners but had
been dissuaded by Jack, who convinced his brothers that WarnerScope
would deliver exactly the same results with less expense. Of course, that
was before the well-mounted publicity campaign had made CinemaScope
a household word; and now, in the light of the money CinemaScope was
generating, Harry agreed with Albert: WarnerScope could not hope to
compete. So just about the time that A Star Is Born was going into its
fourth day of production, Albert Warner quietly set up a meeting with
Both Century-Fox vice-president Al Lichtman, head of distribution
and, next to Skouras and Zanuck, the executive most closely associated
with the company's efforts to have CinemaScope embraced by the entire
industry.

By Thursday, October 15, James Mason had recovered sufficiently to be
able to work on his first scenes. As he recalled: "I felt I was getting better.
I was taking anti-seasick pills, but I remained unsteady for a long timewhich was good, for it happened that the first set I worked in was Norman
Maine's bedroom and the only sequence to be shot in it concerned his
waking up in the middle of the night after having been put to bed a few
hours earlier in an extremely drunken condition, trying to remember the
name of the girl who had saved him from making a fool of himself. I could
now use my dizziness for this." Cukor had devised an elaborate and imagi native addition to this sequence, as Mason discovered to his amusement:
"On the way to the set I ran into a strange-looking girl in one of the
corridors of the studio. She seemed to be dressed in a curtain of some kind,
with bizarre red and gray body makeup on. When I commented on her
appearance she told me that she was playing the part of a curtain. She
seemed to think that this explained everything. George, aided and abetted
by his friend Hoyningen-Huene, was trying to stylize the film, or parts of
it, by relating sections to the work of some painter. In this case George had
evidently thought of the drunken Maine waking in the night as a nightmare
by Henry Fuseli (a.k.a. Johann Heinrich Fussli). The window drapes in the
room were to take on the look of nightmare girls. Hence, the young lady
as the curtain." Unfortunately, the better part of the day was spent trying
to light and stage this so that it worked. After thirty-five takes, Cukor,
Hoyningen-Huene, and Hoch gave up on the idea and shot the scene sans
nightmare.