A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (4 page)

In fact, aside from the theaters and some of the more famous restaurants,
Hollywood itself has an extremely ordinary, nondescript look to it, much
like a small midwestern city. As you walk about, you notice that most of
the buildings seem to have been built in the 192os and 1930s; and while
they are, for the most part, well maintained, signs of decay are beginning
to creep in, especially in the facades of some of the older structures, which have been converted to other uses, with a jarring juxtaposition of unintegrated old and new. But still, the aura of the place, the cleanliness of the
shops and the streets, and the very fact that it's Hollywood tend to suffuse
the whole with an indefinable glamour-especially when you notice someone like Gary Cooper stopped at a red light in his silver Rolls-Royce, or
when you walk down the forecourt of another of Sid Grauman's temples
of exotica, this time "the world famous Egyptian Theatre," built at the
height of the 1920S craze for all things Egyptian. (It's incongruous, you
think, that The Egyptian is playing at the Chinese while "MGM's freshas-a-daisy musical" Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is holding forth at the
Egyptian.)

Thinking there might be something at the Egyptian akin to the footprints in the Chinese's forecourt, you search for some commemoration of
Hollywood's past glories. You finally find a printed cardboard sign that lists
some of the famous premieres held at the theater, beginning with Douglas
Fairbanks's Robin Hood in igzz and ending with the "repremiere" of
Gone With the Wind in August 1954, just last month. One thing that is
lacking in Hollywood is a place to see these famous films that are commemorated in stone, song, and cardboard lists; most of them are as inaccessible as entree to the studios themselves. Only one theater in the entire area
specializes in showcasing "old" films, the tiny Silent Movie Theater on
Fairfax Avenue-and that is largely a labor of love on the part of its owners,
John and Dorothy Hampton, who show films from their own extensive
collection, with no help from either the studios or any other organization
supposedly devoted to the perpetuation of Hollywood's past. True, there
are the occasional mass reissues of older films, such as Gone With the Wind
and King Kong and the Disney films. But most of the films that you hear
your parents talk about are never seen; and if you want to find out anything
about them, you have to read about them in books, and there aren't too
many of those, either. If you go into the Hollywood library and ask to see
books on the history of the movies, you'll have a choice of approximately
seventy titles-histories of the business, biographies, a few sociological
studies. But hardly anywhere in town can you view anything that is discussed in these books. There are film courses at UCLA and USC, and the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences occasionally holds screenings of older films at its theater at Melrose and Doheny; but none of these
are open to the public. Ironically, the only way for most people to see an
older film is on television, which is beginning to open the eyes of a new generation to the wonders (and the trash) of Hollywood's past. The New
View Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, next door to the Larry Edmunds
Book Shop (which specializes in "Books on Cinema and Theatre," as its
sign proclaims), has just recently begun a policy of showing reissues. But
even this is at the mercy of the major studios' practice of mistreating their
older films. You notice that the New View is running a double bill of The
Black Swan and To the Shores of Tripoli, both originally filmed in Technicolor but reissued in black and white. The week before, the theater
showed two Humphrey Bogart films, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and
Key Largo, which Warner Bros. had decided to shorten by ten minutes
each to feature them on a double bill.

The Hollywood studios' and distributors' prevailing attitude toward
older films is that they don't exist, except as occasional subjects for remakes
or the infrequent reissue to fill a distribution need. Except for some independent producers and distributors, the heads of the major studios turn
down all requests for their film backlogs to be shown on television; myopically, they view the new medium as a competitor, a threat to the continued
success of theatrical exhibitions. Until 1952 most of the studios owned large
chains of theaters that supplied them with much of their income. Marcus
Loew, a pioneer exhibitor and founder of Loews Incorporated, the parent
of MGM, had said it succinctly: "We don't sell tickets to movies; we sell
tickets to theaters." This attitude continues to prevail even in 1954, five
years after the justice Department, in a landmark antitrust suit, forced the
film companies to divorce their production-distribution arms from their
exhibition outlets. The studios obeyed the letter of the law, but just barely,
for Paramount theaters still largely play Paramount pictures and Loews
theaters still play MGM products; the same is true of the RKO theaters
and the Warner and Fox theater chains.

As a typical moviegoer, though, you are unaware of any of this, and you
continue your tour of Hollywood Boulevard. On Las Palmas Avenue, directly around the corner from the Egyptian Theatre, is a newsstand proclaiming WORLD'S LARGEST SELECTION OF OUT-OF-TOWN NEWSPAPERS! YOU
probably stop to look through your hometown paper to see what's been
happening there. Out of curiosity you may start leafing through the fan
magazines or the "trades": the green-bordered Daily Variety or the distinctive red-and-black Hollywood Reporter. If you look through some of the
magazines this September 29th, you'll see Time's cover story asking the
question "What Is the American Character?"; Look featuring Arthur Godfrey's article on underprivileged teachers and a paean to a World Series
hero, "What Is So Rare As a Willie Mays?" by the unlikeliest of authors,
Tallulah Bankhead; and Newsweek profiling hotelier Conrad Hilton. Rock
Hudson, the new romantic idol, is on the cover of Photoplay, and the story
inside, "Rock's Magnificent Obsession," is tied in to publicize his newest,
biggest hit. There are stories on veteran star Bill Holden ("The Guy with
the Grin"), new stars Debbie Reynolds and Tab Hunter, young marrieds
Barbara Rush and Jeffrey Hunter, and superstars Marlon Brando, Jean
Simmons, and Doris Day. If you look at the Hollywood Reporter, you learn
that Merian C. Cooper, famed for his King Kong, has dropped his affiliation with the Cinerama Company (for whom he co-produced the innovative blockbuster This Is Cinerama) and is going back to his fifteen-year-old
partnership with John Ford in the Argosy Corporation, whose biggest
success was 195 2's The Quiet Man. Thumbing through the trades, you also
learn that Warner Bros. has five pictures in production at its Burbank
studios, among them Mister Roberts, starring Henry Fonda in his acclaimed stage role; a John Wayne/Lana Turner vehicle called The Sea
Chase; and Jump into Hell, an action melodrama about the recent French
defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. You discover that at the San
Fernando Valley studios of Universal-International, one mile west of
Warners, World War I I hero turned movie star Audie Murphy is appearing
in his autobiographical To Hell and Back, while girl-next-door June Allyson
is playing a heavily dramatic part opposite Jose Ferrer in The Shrike, an
adaptation of another stage play; and that at the Beverly Hills studios of
aoth Century-Fox, ten miles south, Billy Wilder is directing Marilyn
Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, still another stage-hit adaptation, and
Richard Todd and Jean Peters are appearing in the true-life inspirational
drama A Man Called Peter. And you learn that MGM's Culver City stages,
two miles south of Fox, are busy with a remake of the 1920S musical
comedy Hit the Deck, with a cast of new favorites including Debbie
Reynolds, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, and pop singer Vic Damone and
veteran dancer Ann Miller; that Interrupted Melody, the biography of
polio-stricken opera singer Marjorie Lawrence, is being filmed with Eleanor
Parker and Glenn Ford, while master director Fritz Lang is making a
costume adventure film called Moon fleet with Stewart Granger. Reading
the box-office statistics from across the country, you learn that the biggest
hits of the week are This Is Cinerama (in its second year and still going
strong); On the Waterfront, the gritty drama about labor-union corruption with a bravura performance by Marlon Brando; Betrayed, a mediocre
romantic drama with Clark Gable and Lana Turner (which marks the end
of Gable's twenty-three-year association with MGM); Hitchcock's Rear
Window; and the medieval action epic The Black Shield of Falworth,
Universal's first CinemaScope production, starring the husband-and-wife
team of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. The corresponding top-rated television shows across the country that week are "I Love Lucy"; "The Jackie
Gleason Show"; Ed Sullivan's variety show, "The Toast of the Town";
"Disneyland"; and "The Jack Benny Show." "Dragnet," the Jack Webb
police program that makes a virtue of its Los Angeles locations and a
national anthem of its theme song, is number six in the ratings, followed
by "I Led Three Lives," about an American agent posing as a communist;
"Amos 'n' Andy" and "The Life of Riley," both carryovers from radio; and
"The Liberace Show," starring the dimpled darling who takes piano playing
and candelabra to new depths of bourgeois delight.

If you're looking for an evening's entertainment, the trades offer ads for
some unique offerings in the Los Angeles area. In a section referred to as
"Theaters-Spoken Drama" you learn that Miss Helen Hayes ("The First
Lady of the American Theater") is appearing at the new Huntington
Hartford Theatre on Vine Street in Hollywood, in James M. Barrie's What
Every Woman Knows. Downtown at the Philharmonic Auditorium, the
Civic Light Opera Association is presenting Mary Martin in a new musical
version of the same writer's Peter Pan. Other productions include The
Drunkard, now in its twenty-second (!) year, and "a brilliant new musical
revue called That's Life" at the tiny Las Palmas Theatre in Hollywood.

In both trades, however, the most interesting notice is a six-page advertising section announcing "The Most Anticipated Event in Entertainment
History!"-the world premiere that very evening at the RKO Pantages
Theatre in Hollywood of A Star Is Born, the Judy Garland movie whose
hit song "The Man That Got Away" you've been hearing on the radio all
across the country. The ad is in the form of thank-you notes from Garland
to everyone connected with the film and the same from Jack Warner, head
of Warner Bros., the company that co-produced the movie with Transcona
Enterprises. The studio was publicizing not only Garland but the amount
of money that the film cost and the length of time it took to produce ("$6
million and 21/2 years to make it!"). In fact, if you peruse the magazine
rack, you suddenly realize that Garland and A Star Is Born are featured in
just about every major magazine: Collier's, Redbook, Parents, Look, Cos mopolitan, and-most impressive to you as a moviegoer-Life, whose
cover shows a close-up of a freckle-faced urchin with the caption "Judy as
Gamin." If you need any further proof that this is a major filmland event,
the list of stars attending the premiere is a veritable Who's Who (and Who
Was Who) of Hollywood. According to the ads in the trades and in the
Los Angeles Times, the Herald-Express, and the Hollywood Citizen News,
more than two hundred and fifty major personalities will be there, ranging
from Anna Maria Alberghetti to Mai Zetterling. For those unfortunates
in other parts of the country, the premiere will be covered live by television
and relayed all across the United States, the first time anything like this has
ever been done. As a tourist, however, you can have a front-row seat at a
ritual that, at least according to the publicity, promises to be the most
exciting, glittering, and glamorous affair of this or any other year-a throwback to the fabled premieres that you've read about in the fan magazines
and caught glimpses of in the newsreels. On impulse, you buy a copy of
Life, just in case you have the chance to get her autograph at the premiere.

As night falls, an array of searchlights near Hollywood and Vine forms
a multipointed star over the Pantages Theatre, signaling to everyone for
miles around that something extraordinary is about to take place. As you
near the intersection, you realize with dismay that maybe you've waited too
long to get to the theater. The entire two-block area around Hollywood and
Vine is filled with a swaying, shoving mass of humanity-you overhear one
reporter estimate the crowd at twenty thousand. Barricades have been set
up all along Hollywood Boulevard for two blocks on either side of the
theater, while bleachers on both sides of the theater entrance have been
erected for fans smart enough to arrive early, some of them as early as nine
that morning-they're the ones lucky enough to have ringside seats for the
show.

And what a show it is! The limousines began arriving around eight,
disgorging more celebrities than have been seen in one spot in Hollywood
in years, including at the Academy Awards. There are Hedda Hopper and
Louella Parsons and Sophie Tucker and Joan Crawford with Cesar Romero
and the Gary Coopers and the Tony Curtises and the Dean Martins and
the Clark Gables and Rock Hudson. They drive up five cars across and
hundreds deep; as far as you can see down Hollywood Boulevard, limousines
are lined up waiting to discharge their glamorous occupants to the lightsplashed entrance. The thousands in the bleachers and on the streets raise
a crescendo of sound ranging from applause to shrieks as their favorites emerge from the sleek black autos, tuxedoed, bejeweled, smiling, waving:
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Stack, Kim Novak, even Marlene Dietrich, arriving in a vintage open-front limousine with director Ella Kazan.
And there's Liberace!-and Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland, Lucy and
Desi, and the Alan Ladds, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Fred MacMurray,
television's Wild Bill Hickok (a.k.a. Guy Madison), Chariton Heston, the
Jack Bennys, and Groucho Marx. As they arrive, you notice, they are
greeted by four beautiful hostesses and taken through an interview circle
where they are announced by Jack Carson, one of the stars of the picture,
or, later, by George Jessel. From there they are shepherded over to the
television cameras and introduced by emcee George Fischer to fans across
the country. As you watch all this-or try to from deep inside the crowd,
everyone straining for the same view-you are amazed and astounded at
the hysteria, the noise, the cars, the confusion, and the glamour that is
panoplied and paraded in front of you before disappearing inside the
theater. If you have the chance, you may notice that James Mason, Garland's co-star, and George Cukor, the picture's director, are nowhere to be
seen. But a huge roar emerges as Judy Garland, her husband, Sid Luft, and
Jack Warner arrive in a frenzy of police escorts, flashbulbs, reporters, and
shoving, pushing, screaming fans. Any hopes you may have had about
getting Garland's autograph are drowned in the sea of surging people, held
at bay by phalanxes of police on horseback and on foot. As you watch, you
can see George Jessel greet both Garland and Warner warmly. Anything
being said over the loudspeakers is drowned out by the continued screams
of the crowd. Garland and her party are hurried into the theater, and almost
immediately the crowd noise diminuendos, the lights begin to fade, and the
throngs, realizing that the show is over, begin to slowly disperse ... except
for the patient hundreds who wait outside three hours for the film to unreel.
They then gawk and scream all over again as Hollywood's aristocracy file
out of the theater into the waiting limousines and are whisked off to a
midnight postpremiere party at the Ambassador Hotel.