A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (35 page)

That was true, but the scene immediately following the song was entirely
Mason's. After Vicki has cheered Norman up, they start to make love and
are interrupted by the doorbell. A deliveryman has a package for Vicki
Lester; when Norman says he is her husband, he is instructed to "sign right
here, Mr. Lester." When Norman closes the door, Cukor lets the camera
stay on Mason's back, and the actor eloquently manages to convey Norman's sense of futility, frustration, and defeat with a slight sagging of his
body and a droop to his shoulders. When he turns, the humiliation and
dejection in his face are revealed. Going back into the living room, he
brushes off Vicki's quip "Now that the supper show is over, let's have
supper" and instead makes for the liquor bottle.

"Someone at Last" was definitely a tour de force, but it was also a
grueling test of the actress's stamina, as it was one of the most physically
demanding of all the sequences in the film. Veteran actress Ina Claire, a
close friend of Cukor's, visited the set one afternoon and watched Garland
do several takes, after which she commented: "That girl should work for
two hours and then take an ambulance home." To capture Garland's
performance and her energy with no chance of mishaps, Cukor resorted to
an unusual (for him) technique: "I ... set up two cameras for this musical
number," he related. "We did it with an `A' camera, and we used a
supplementary one, just to see what would happen. When it was all over,
we found that the `B' camera, the one we had there for fun, [was sometimes] the really interesting one. It wasn't always in perfect focus, the
composition was not perfect, but it was very exciting, very dynamic."

By the time work had finished on "Someone at Last," A Star Is Born had
been in production for four months, prompting lyricist Ira Gershwin to
write to a friend, "We finished our work on it almost a year ago ... and
the picture should be finished shooting by the end of this month. Almost
like the von Stroheim days-twenty or so weeks." In the interim, he and
Arlen had composed four songs for Paramount's film version of Clifford
Odets's play The Country Girl, starring Bing Crosby, William Holden, and Grace Kelly, which had been shot and edited and was almost ready for
release while A Star Is Born was still in production.

Gershwin's prediction that A Star Is Born would be finished by late
February proved overly optimistic, for with the two additional musical
numbers and the retakes still to be done, the production looked to have
another four weeks of filming before completion. However, as far as
Cukor was concerned, as he revealed in a letter to a friend written on
February 26,

at long last, the picture's finished-much to everybody's surprise. . . . All
that's left now are two musical numbers and some re-takes, and goodness
knows when we'll manage to get those. Up until the last few weeks everything went quite well, with just a certain amount of delay. After that, I'm
afraid that Judy slipped right back into her Metro pattern-illness, lateness-all very mysterious and disquieting. It has been expensive for the
studio, and trying for all concerned. However, there's unbounded enthusiasm
around the studio for the results of our work. When the rough cut of the
picture has been shown to the usual "tough eggs," the Sales Department,
Publicity Department, etc., they leave the projection room, sobbing and
carrying on. Usually I have misgivings about this kind of studio enthusiasm,
but in this case I have a hunch myself that it's all pretty good. Even though
concentrating for such a length of time on one picture is a strain, I find that
my interest and excitement has never abated. I don't remember being this
het up by anything in years.

Cukor maintained his enthusiasm during the period devoted to the
retakes despite the tension and fatigue that began to affect the production
and everyone concerned with it. Lucy Marlow remembers vividly one
particular incident: "We were redoing the scene between Lola and Norman
in Maine's home. He was lying on the sofa watching television and I was
supposed to come running in in a wet bathing suit. They had put a hose
over my head and got me all wet; so I ran in and my slippers were soaking
wet and the parquet floor was very slick, and when I ran in I slipped and
fell flat on my back with the cameras rolling. The wind was knocked out
of me and I couldn't speak. Mr. Cukor yelled `Cut!' and everybody came
running over to me ... and I heard this laughter. It just rippled up and
down the scales-it was so distinctively Garland. And she came over and
actually cradled my head in her arms. I was trying to talk, and I was struggling around trying to stand up, so they knew I was all right, but she
said, 'Honey, lay there, just lay there, and we'll sue the S.O.B.' She was
talking about Jack Warner ... evidently they were having real conflicts."

Several days after this, Garland was back on the recording stage, working
with Ray Heindorf on the next-to-last song needed for the film, "Lose That
Long Face." This was the number that would bracket her dressing-room
confession scene with Niles. As Gene Allen recalls: "Mr. Cukor wasn't very
excited about that number. He felt that the picture could do without it.
I believe he tried to talk them out of doing it, but evidently he couldn't,
because we got word to get a set ready. So we took an old standing set from
A Streetcar Named Desire and we painted it all white, and we did the
number on it. It was one way to save money."

With the prerecording done, the set ready, and the thirty dancers
rehearsed, all that remained was for Garland to finish rehearsing with her
"dance-in" and then to go before the cameras for a week's filming. This
was scheduled to begin on March 2, but, unbeknownst to Garland, Cukor
would not be directing the number. Instead, a Warner contract director
named Jack Donohue would be in charge.

Forty-five-year-old Jack Donohue had started his show-business career as
a child dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies of 1920 and had risen to become
dance director for numerous Broadway and London stage shows. He'd
moved to Hollywood in the 193os and lumped back and forth between the
stage and films in the intervening years. In 1952 he staged the musical
numbers for the Broadway revival of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing, and the
same year he became the resident dance expert at Warner Bros., staging
the numbers for the Doris Day vehicles Calamity Jane and Lucky Methe
latter was being shot in CinemaScope almost simultaneously with A Star
Is Born. He was an old-time hoofer, and his dance direction reflected this,
being fast and unimaginative. As a director, he was also fast and unimaginative, notorious for single takes and fast shooting. He was assigned to "Lose
That Long Face" (which Barstow had choreographed) because Warner
wanted to avoid Cukor's meticulous approach to what was, after all, a fairly
routine production number-and Cukor, as Allen noted, had very little
interest in the number or in its staging.

Russ Llewellyn recalls that on the day shooting was to start, "Garland
doesn't know that Cukor's not going to direct. We got her into makeup,
got her into wardrobe. The set's lit, we got the dancers in there, and she
comes on the set. Donohue says, 'All ready, roll the camera.' And we roll it, we do a take, and he says, `Cut. Next setup over here, boys-give me
another angle right here.' Now Garland is used to twenty-five, thirty takes
with Cukor. And this guy is printing take one. She says, `Where's Mr.
Cukor?' We tell her, `Mr. Cukor won't be on this.' That poor girl went out
of her mind. You've never seen such tears; she shouted, she just went crazy.
I never felt so sorry for anybody. She ran to the phone, got hold of Warner,
and screams, 'I want to talk to Mr. Cukor!' But he's nowhere. Finally she
just slams down the phone, goes out, gets into her limousine. The driver
told me that she had a bottle of vodka and she drank it all the way home.
And we never heard from her. Now, the studio is going crazy trying to get
hold of Cukor, but he wouldn't talk to anybody. So something had to be
done. They talked Cukor into coming in and standing behind the camera
while Donohue directed, and Cukor would tell her if it was any good or
not. So they finally worked it out that way and got it finished. But that poor
girl went crazy."

The production log bears out certain aspects of Llewellyn's version:
Garland did work for one hour on the first day, then went home "ill" and
stayed that way for the next four days. However, according to the studio
records, her "dance-in," Gloria DeWerd, went to Garland's home on those
four days to rehearse the actress in the dance every evening from eight to
ten. Cukor related his own account of these events in a letter written near
the end of production:

I don't know when I will be "sprung" from this particular assignment. I am
now working with the cutter, but there are still some loose ends to be done.
When we will get at these I don't know. In fact, it's not at all certain that
anything else can or will be shot. After an auspicious start, and a very exciting
time during most of the shooting, I'm sorry to say that it all ended in a kind
of shambles. All that was left to be done was a simple dance, which had been
rehearsed and set, and an elaborate production number, on which no work
had been done at all.... About three weeks ago, strange, sinister and sad
things began happening to Judy. I suspect there's a crisis in her domestic
situation.... It's all very odd. Her behavior about the number with the dance
director was in her best MGM tradition. The number should have taken a
week to rehearse and about three days to shoot. It came to a stop last week
after the dancers had been paid for six weeks, and Judy never completed the
number. The studio finished it as best it could with a double. Judy had said
she wanted a week's rest before she started the number, and the studio could
do nothing but accede to her demands. I have observed that after her so-called rests, she always comes back in much worse shape than when she
left. I think there's much more drinking than resting. When she came back
this time her behavior was really unconscionable. Sometimes she'd come in
for an hour and then leave, because she was absolutely exhausted, then go
straight to the races. Or, she'd be too sick to appear at the studio at all, and
the next day one would read in Louella Parsons's column about how "cute
Judy was when she got up on the floor of the Mocambo last night and sang
a couple of numbers." She abandoned all pretense of reporting for work on
time. Finally the studio got fed up with having the cast and crew sitting
around twiddling their thumbs-all being paid, mark you-so they worked
out a system whereby they would call Judy at eight-thirty in the morning.
She would tell them if she was coming in and they would make their calls
[to the cast and crew]. This went on for a few days, with everybody jumping
through hoops when she gave the signal. Then it got so they couldn't get
her on the telephone. In fact, no one would answer the telephone at her
house. This is the behavior of someone unhinged, but there is an arrogance
and a ruthless selfishness that eventually alienates one's sympathy. She's
always saying that the trouble with her is that she's so honest and direct, and
that everyone lies to her. The fact is that when she's in this state the truth
isn't in her, she's devious and untrustworthy. I found that she not only had
no regard for anyone, but very little loyalty. I suppose it's wrong to judge her
by sane standards, but if you're forced by your work to be at the mercy of
such erratic carryings-on, you find yourself responding to it in an all-toohuman way. What will happen next I don't know. The studio frankly is at
a loss because these numbers are necessary to the plot of the picture. She
may snap out of it in a week or so. During the picture there were some minor
crises and she pulled herself together and was fine for quite a long spell.
When I finish cutting, I'm not going to hang around. Warners aren't
prepared to pay me a salary for just sitting and waiting; Metro doesn't see
any reason why they should (I agree with them); and I don't see why I should
make any sacrifices, so there you are.

What happened next was a demonstration of Jack Warner's nerve and
his proclivity for high-stakes gambling. He waited until Garland, in Cukor's
words, "pulled herself together." She had worked sporadically on "Lose
That Long Face," as the production log indicates, but the number was
finished with Gloria DeWerd doubling for Garland. Unfortunately the
difference in performance was so obvious as to make the footage unusable,
so Warner, gambler that he was, looking at the pile of chips he had riding
on the production, upped the ante, giving Luft approval to keep the cast and much of the crew on salary while waiting for his star to return to
normal.

During the time it took for this to happen, the company was not
completely idle. James Mason recalled this period: "Judy was not always
reliable.... There were quite a lot of days ... when to give Jack Warner
and the others the impression that we were hard at work, I would be
required to do an inordinate number of `driving' shots. I mean simple shots
of me driving the Mercedes or the Mercury in or out of the studio, in or
out of the grounds of the house supposedly occupied by the Maines, among
the Hollywood Hills, in downtown L.A., along the Pacific Coast Highway,
etc.

"The higher-ups tended to forget that they had undertaken this operation knowing full well that Judy did not have a reputation for reliability;
they forgot that prizes are not won nor audiences bewitched by an exercise
in reliability ... To get something as unique as Judy's talent, some patience
and sacrifices were needed. If the film went over budget only a very small
fraction of the overage was due to Judy's erratic time table. When I think
of it, my God, they were well off! Judy was by no means a temperamental
star. `Temperamental star' is usually a euphemism for selfish and badtempered, and a temperamental star of this sort can be a real time waster.
I know. I have worked with some ... But this was not Judy."