A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (32 page)

After these problems had been solved to everyone's satisfaction, Cukor
turned to the difficult scene showing Norman overhearing the conversation
between Esther and Niles and his agony at the knowledge that once again
he has "destroyed everything I touch." There was no dialogue; it was an
entirely silent bit and needed all of Mason's gifts as an actor to get the
points across in a believable and affecting fashion. Mason related: "The
great thing about a relationship between a director and an actor is that it
is a cooperation. An actor should help the director-he should try to figure
out what particular talents this director has and how he could help serve
him and cooperate with him. One of my best experiences was working with
George. He is at the top of the list of the few really gifted directors I've
worked with."

Cukor elaborated on Mason's comments: "I never rehearse the emotions
of a scene, only the mechanics. The scene didn't require anything special
... it all happened so naturally. It was very moving, mainly because of James
Mason. He is a complete actor. He is a man who has the greatest discretion
... rather reserved by nature ... a mysterious, enigmatic creature.... I
knew that this scene would be a case of letting him find things out for
himself. To see that man break down was very moving. All the credit for
that goes to James. He did it all himself. What I did was to let him do it
and let it go on and on, let the camera stay on him for an eternity. All his
feelings came out ... he became so involved, in fact, that he could hardly
stop, and I just let him do what he felt."

If Mason's scene "didn't require anything special," it was because of his
abilities as a dramatic actor, his experience at his craft, and his willingness to explore his own hidden emotional world. Garland, however, was a different matter. "Until A Star Is Born, " related Cukor, "Judy Garland had only
played musical comedy. A lot of people in musical comedy are like mimics
or impersonators, which is not real acting. They promise more than they
deliver. You think, 'if only they could play out a scene, how good they'd
be,' and very often you're wrong." Cukor was now to find out whether he
had been wrong in his early impression that Garland "possessed the emotional ability ... to be a great dramatic actress." Up to now in the filming,
Garland had been giving a performance that was near her old MGM
standard: warm, amusing, and with flashes of a deeper emotional sensitivity;
but nothing in the script had challenged her to go beyond the smooth, easy
style of "personality" acting that she had been trained in. Now, however,
Hart's screenplay required her to probe into areas that were foreign to her
as an actress.

The first of such scenes now scheduled to be filmed took place after
Norman's funeral. Esther has cut herself off from all contact with everyone
and everything and stays at home, isolated and brooding. Danny McGuire
comes to pick her up for a guest appearance she has promised to make at
a benefit-ironically, at the Shrine Auditorium. When she demurs, he tries
to persuade her and she turns on him, near hysteria, whereupon he lambastes her as being "a great monument to Norman Maine ... he was a
drunk and he wasted his life, but he loved you ... and took great pride
in the one thing in his life that wasn't a waste-you.... Now you're doing
the one thing he was terrified of-you're tossing aside the one thing he had
left.... You're the only thing that remains of him now ... and if you just
kick it away, it's like he never existed. Like there was never a Norman
Maine at all."

According to Cukor, "Judy ... was a very original and resourceful actress.
We'd talked about the scene only a little, but we both had a general idea
of what it should be. The basic idea was her melancholia, her state of total
depression. While we lined it up she just sat there, very preoccupied. Just
before the take I said to her very quietly, `You know what this is about. You
really know this.' She gave me a look and I knew she was thinking, `He
wants me to dig into myself, because I know all about this in my own life.'
That was all. Then we did a take."

If the scene was trying for Garland, it was nerve-wracking for Tom
Noonan, who was playing Danny McGuire. His entrance had to be shot
seven times due to his nervousness. When this had been done to Cukor's satisfaction, they moved to the core of the scene, which was Vicki's hysterical reaction to Danny's insistence that she come to the benefit. Garland's
playing of this was evidently so fierce that it completely threw Noonan, for,
as Earl Bellamy recalls, "Tommy was not new [to acting], but he hadn't
done anything as big as this, and it was intimidating the way Judy came
on. He was very taken aback. It was very rough for him, and we finally had
to stop, and Cukor took him aside and said, 'Now listen, come on ...' and
so we started it over." Cukor remembered that "[in the scene] she has
trouble articulating anything, she seems exhausted and dead. [He] .. .
chides her about not giving in to herself ... and she loses her head. When
... Garland did this, it was one of the most tremendous outbursts of
emotion I'd ever seen. It was absolutely terrifying. She [got] up and
screamed like someone out of control, maniacal.... She had no concern
with what she looked like, she went much further than I'd expected.
... I was sitting right there with the camera next to me but I felt that I
was watching some awful cataclysm of nature.... I was ... scared that
[Noonan] might be thrown ... [but this time] he stayed right with her,
at one moment he even grabbed her and she tried to get away. (You have
to be careful about moments like that, they musn't be too rehearsed or slick,
and they musn't be too goddamned much. But this was exactly right, an
ugly, awkward, desperate scuffle.) So he grabbed her and held her and spoke
his next lines with great force and energy. The lines were meant to shame
her-and her reaction was unforgettable. She turned around and you saw
that all the anger and madness and fear had disappeared. Her face looked
very vulnerable and tender, there were tears in her eyes. So I said 'Cut!'
and then, 'Quick, let's do it once more!' and they dried Judy off to get her
ready again. One of the hazards of picture-making ... is that you get a scene
which turns out wonderfully, but next morning they tell you the sound was
no good or there was a scratch on the film. That's why I wanted to do it
again immediately. So Judy did it again-differently, but just as stunningly.
Scenes can never be reproduced exactly, and you shouldn't try.... When
it was over I said to Judy, 'You really scared the hell out of me.' She was
very pleased, she didn't realize what an effect she'd made. And then-she
was always funny, she had this great humor-she said, 'Oh, that's nothing.
Come over to my house any afternoon. I do it every afternoon.' Then she
gave me a look and added, 'But I only do it once at home.' "

It was at this juncture in the filming that Moss Hart arrived in Los Angeles to, as he had written Cukor, "take a look at the picture and see if you need any rewriting, before whatever retakes are necessary." The picture was in rough form; there were scenes that had not yet been photographed, three of the musical numbers hadn't been done, and there were alternate versions of some scenes included in the rough assembly, as Cukor had not yet decided which portions of each he wanted to use. Hart spent the better part of four days in mid-January looking at the picture and conferring with Luft and Cukor about what he felt to be the strengths and weaknesses of the work that had been done. In an interview with Ed Sullivan shortly after this, Hart commented on what he considered to be a new maturity in Garland as an actress: "It has nothing to do with technique," he said. "It is a curious instinct that she possesses. Give her a scene and instinctively she'll play it right. Watching her, you get the almost weird impression that she's-I don't know quite how to explain it-but it's something like a great musician plucking the strings of a harp."

His observations and suggestions about the picture overall were relayed in a five-page memo to Jack Warner, Luft, and Cukor; most of them concerned cuts that he felt could be made in many scenes. His most drastic suggestion for a revision was completely refilming all of the scenes at the Downbeat Club, the after-hours musicians' hangout where Norman first hears Esther sing:

I've revised and re-written this scene as of today, and I suggest cutting the action at the very beginning of this scene, that part that has Esther handing out coffee to the band. The whole start of this scene is not right, and I suggest you devise a new first part for this.... in the Academy Awards sequence, the television screen is extremely distracting to everything played and completely bewildering. I feel the scene is immeasurably hurt by the presence of the TV screen.*
The night club terrace scene should be retaken, as should the sanitarium scene. As you will note, this calls for only three re-takes ... the rest are cuts ... and I must say in terms of a picture as big as this, it seems very small to me.

Moss

Hart then left for New York, where he was to direct a new play, Anniversary Waltz. On his flight back east he elaborated on his thoughts about
A Star Is Born in a letter to Jack Warner:

It was my idea to come out there and spend a week just looking at what had
been done because I take a personal interest in every picture I write. This
one, in particular. You already know what I like and didn't like about the
picture. . . . I think it emerges as a major picture and should be a very
successful commercial one, which I, like yourself, am always interested in.
... One of the major jobs of the picture from now on will be the editing
and the cutting. One of the dangers of a picture which has run as long in
the shooting as this one has, is that by the end of it everyone is understandably weary, and as far as I am concerned ... I do feel this picture ... will
be helped by a creative job in the editing of it.... And I wonder if it [is]
possible, since I shall be in rehearsal with a new play, when the final editing,
or even a semi-final editing is done and a rough cut is available, if a print
could not be sent on to me in New York, since I cannot come out again.
I would look at it and suggest some cuts. I hope you or whoever is concerned
with the final editing will not do a rush or a quick job on it. . . . I urge
... at the risk of repeating myself, that the cutting and editing be done as
carefully and creatively as the script and the shooting was done. I think you
are going to have a very successful picture, Jack. Not a little of which is due
to your courage and belief in seeing it through, in spite of all the difficulties
I know you have had... .

As always,
Moss

Warner's reply was reassuring:

Dear Moss:

Thanks for your lovely letter ... Your concern with editing of this picture
strikes a sympathetic note with me, as I share your feeling and will make
certain the editing is done with sensitive care and taste.... All the best to
you and Kitty,

Jack

Hart's memo and his letter to Warner prompted an extensive re-examination of the work that had been done on the film and the work still to
come. Warner, after lengthy conferences with Luft and Cukor, gave per mission to redo not only the sequences that Hart had suggested but also
twelve other scenes in the film that he and Cukor felt either had been
rushed or were otherwise not up to the quality of the rest of the picture.
To do this would add at least another ten days to the shooting schedule
and increase the budget by another $250,oo0, boosting the cost of the film
to almost $4 million, making it the most expensive picture Warners had
ever made.

This fact was soon known throughout the industry and was gleefully
seized upon by David Selznick. He and his executives were still trying to
devise a suitable strategy that would force Warners to turn over to them
the negative of the 1937 original; so far, all their demands and legal
threats had proven ineffective. Selznick now decided to confront the matter head-on with a personal appeal to Jack Warner before his attorneys
went ahead with formal legal action. As he remarked to them in a memo:

I hear from everybody ... that A Star Is Born is going on and on like a river
... and it is apparent that [it] is going to be the most expensive picture
[Warners] have ever made, perhaps the most costly anyone in the industry
has ever made, and that they need the entire world market, without complications, if they hope to get their costs back, not to speak of a profit. I think
we ought to discuss ... what, if anything, to do about ... bringing the facts
before Luft and Miss Garland, for among other things ... I am eager for
[everyone] to know that this is nothing that has come up lately ... but
something on which we put Warner on notice long before they started
production. Otherwise, this matter may boomerang on us badly in terms of
trade relations ... especially in view of the trade's adoration of Miss Garland
and the fact that they are rooting for her great success.