A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (46 page)

In the decade between 1957 and 1967, a whole new industry sprang up
around this love of older films. The study of moving pictures became an
accepted and popular discipline in universities. From these educational
centers emerged graduate students with elaborate theories on the impact
and meaning of film and filmmaking. An entire subculture in the academic
and publishing worlds appeared. As these youngsters matured, matriculated, graduated, and decided on careers, thousands of them migrated
to Hollywood in the i96os and 1970s, drawn by the lure of what they had
seen on TV and been taught in their film classes.

The reality of what they found there was a jolting disillusionment. By
the mid-1970s, the city of Hollywood itself, far from being the glamorous
capital of make-believe, was a shabby, dirty eyesore of decaying buildings,
seedy discount stores, and greasy fast-food restaurants. Populated largely by
lowlifes of every class, the litter-strewn streets were teeming with muggers,
druggers, and pimps and prostitutes of both sexes, drawn by the same
magnet that had attracted their more fortunate and educated peers: the
lure of the movies, of fame and wealth and the fabled hedonistic lifestyle
that was so much a part of Hollywood myth. Faced with the influx of the
sordid and squalid, the "respectable" white middle-class population had
fled to the suburbs in the early 196os, as had most of the film production
companies. The only tangible reminders of Hollywood's past glories were
the stars on the Walk of Fame, a series of commemorative insignias laid
down on the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard by the Chamber of Commerce in the 196os, which paid homage to the famous and the forgotten
names in the entertainment world. Grauman's Chinese still stood, but it
now bore the name of its new owner, who had carefully obliterated that
of its founder. The New View Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, which
had featured revivals and newer films of merit, had been converted to a
"pussycat" theater, specializing in pornography; the silent movie theater
on Fairfax Avenue was closed and boarded up; the venerable Hollywood
Hotel was long gone, replaced in 1956 by one of the worst examples of
that decade's utilitarian architecture. The same fate had befallen the
Garden of Allah, the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, the Trocadero, the Mocambo-all demolished to make room for banks, high-rise apartment
buildings, and other examples of contemporary urban necessities. Charlie
Chaplin's old studio at LaBrea and Sunset still stood, but now it housed
A&M Records. The Pantages Theatre, where A Star Is Born had its original
premiere, was now a "legitimate" theater; it at least had been spared the
fate of so many other famed movie palaces, which had fallen under the
wrecker's ball, victims of dwindling audiences and real-estate speculators.
In some cases, the cavernous interiors of these old theaters had been
subdivided into two or three smaller theaters, with tiny screens, poor sound,
and rowdy patrons. The famed HOLLYWOOD sign, long a symbol of the
glamour that once was, had fallen into disrepair; pockmarked, covered with
graffiti, crumbling, and structurally unsound, it was symbolic of the decay
that engulfed Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, now a tawdry thoroughfare
of strip joints, massage parlors, and sex shows.

From the hills of Griffith Park one could see the results of voters' 1957
decision to rescind the old thirteen-story building height limit. From east
of the Santa Monica city limits, the Wilshire Boulevard corridor was lined
with eruptions of steel and glass, while the downtown L.A. area was now
highly visible because of the monolithic monsters that had all but
obliterated City Hall from view, announcing to the world that Los Angeles
was finally a major U.S. financial and architectural center. The same was
true of Westwood, which by the early 198os was so jammed with buildings
and people that the police had to close the streets to vehicular traffic on
the weekend evenings. Beverly Hills had not escaped the blight of bigness,
either. Once a charming, if overpriced, section of shops, hotels, restaurants,
and theaters, by 1983 it was considered the Fifth Avenue of the West.
Major department stores, banks, and hotels proliferated, while almost every
theater within the city had been razed to make room for more banks, more
stores, and more parking lots.

The elimination of nearly all the major movie theaters in Beverly Hills
was an indirect result of yet another technological revolution: the introduction to the United States by Sony of the home video recorder in 1975. A
year later, an entrepreneur named Andre Blay broke through the barrier of
studio fear and hostility and licensed the home video rights to fifty films
from loth Century-Fox. By the end of 1982, there were as many video
sales-and-rental stores in the United States as there were film theaters, and
movies on video cassette were bringing in millions of dollars in profit to the
film companies. This unexpected income was much greater than the stu dios had ever been able to collect from booking their films to the second-run
and neighborhood theaters over the years. As the number of VCRequipped homes rose, there was a corresponding decline in the patronage
of these theaters, with the inevitable result: the closing and demolishing of
another former mainstay of the American film industry. Once again, television, through the video revolution, had killed off an aspect of the film
business, only to give birth to another even more profitable and widespread
form of film distribution.

To gain this new source of revenue, however, the studios and distributors
had to relinquish the cherished and closely held regulation of their films.
Until the advent of the VCR, the ownership of every single copy of a movie
never left the control of the copyright owner. Not even the creative personnel involved in the making of the film could obtain a copy without complicated and arduous legal negotiations and agreements. But the profit to be
made from this new market was potentially so great that the seventy-fiveyear-old tradition of allowing the patron to pay to look at a movie rather
than take it home, as with nearly all other merchandise, finally gave way,
as so many traditions do, to the onslaught of money.

An earlier and indirect synergy to the 1975 introduction of the Sony
Betamax was Congress's formation of the American Film Institute in 1967.
Its mandate, among others stated, was to "serve as national center for
progress in film art ... supporting other organizations and agencies involved
in related activities." The formation of the Institute could conceivably be
traced back to the explosion of interest in the history of film set off by the
fusion of old movies and television. With so much film history on view, it
quickly became apparent, to those who cared, how much was missing. It
was estimated that by the time of the Institute's founding, over half the
feature films produced in this country since the invention of the motion
picture camera in 1888 had been lost through neglect, disinterest, and purposeful destruction, as the film industry, seeing seemingly useless and
valueless films taking up expensive storage space, burned, melted, and
otherwise destroyed a great portion of early film history. It was not until
1935, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York began searching out
and preserving films, that any concerted effort was made to treat motion
pictures an an independent art form. MOMA's pioneering efforts in this
area, led by one of its founders and trustees, John Hay Whitney, and its
first film curator, Iris Barry, sparked similar efforts by other far-sighted
cultural institutions. Following MOMA's lead, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and the Library of Congress and the National
Archives in Washington, D.C., began collecting and preserving film. These
efforts, however, were all hampered by lack of money, lack of coordination,
and the refusal of the production companies to assist in this monumental
task, with either funds, materials, or permissions to save much of what had
brought their companies to prominence and power.

The main preservation problem lies in the fact that until 1950 all
professional film stock manufactured in the United States, both negative
and print, was on a nitrocellulose base, which was unstable and highly
flammable. It could and did crumble into dust or turn into a gooey mess
if not stored and cared for properly. The introduction of acetate safety film
as the professional standard in the late 1940S meant that every negative
and/or print made on nitrate stock would now have to be transferred onto
safety film-a monumental task that should have been undertaken by the
private firms that owned the films. In some cases this was done, as MGM
did in the 1940s, but until television came along with its promise of untold
riches based on the marketing of these films, there was no thought or
concern given to the preservation of older films by the major companies.
And even when television did spur them to action, it was only to save films
made after the introduction of sound: the thirty-five years of film history
previous to The Jazz Singer were considered expendable and inutile. So the
AFI, with public funds provided by the newly formed National Endowment for the Arts, began a concerted effort to find, preserve, and exhibit
as many of these films as possible and to assist the other, older institutions
which were committed to the same goals but hampered by the lack of
money, manpower, and the cooperation of the film industry.

One institution that should have been involved in this effort was the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Since its founding in 1927,
it had undertaken various preservation projects, but these were largely
activities that were the particular enthusiasm of specific individuals on the
Academy's board of governors. Sadly, there was no ongoing commitment
or effort by the Academy to locate and preserve films deemed of historical
importance. Even Academy Award nominees and winners were seldom
deposited in the Academy archive, the consensus evidently being that if an
older film was needed, for whatever purpose, it could be borrowed from the
studio that owned it.

Not until the late 197os did the Academy embark on an ambitious
preservation program. It had been a long time coming, and the catalyst that set it in motion was the election of Fay Kanin to the presidency. Fay has
been a part of the Hollywood community since the mid-1930s, when she
first went to work for RKO as a writer. She loves movies and the people
who make them, and is quick to defend against what she feels are unjustified attacks on Hollywood and the film industry. One of her pet hates is
the name "Tinseltown," denoting, as it does, an attitude of smug condescension toward the place, the people, and the work they do.

Her affection for the movies and for what they represent to us all-our
past, our sense of ourselves, and our aspirations-is deep-rooted and passionate; and because of this she was able to convince the board of governors
that film preservation was an activity to which the Academy should commit
itself. As its president, Fay was also a member of the National Committee
for Film Preservation, along with Frank Hodsoll of the NEA, Jean Firsten-
berg of the AFI, Mary Lea Bandy of MOMA, film historian Jeanine
Basinger of Wesleyan University, and representatives of several other important media arts institutions. This committee decided to make the 198os
"the decade of film preservation," to "alert the film community and the
public to the need for preserving our great film heritage."

Fay expressed her feeling about film: "All art forms are buffeted by time,
but ours has proved unexpectedly ephemeral. Museums can show us sculpture from fifteen hundred years ago and beautifully preserved books and
paintings from before the fifteenth century. But most of the movies made
before 192o have already been lost to us.... The roster of once admired,
now lost pictures-including the Oscar-winning The Patriot [1928]makes uneasy reading.... The nation's film archives have done a heroic
job ... but they need help and they need it soon." Fay made these remarks
at the repremiere of A Star Is Born in 1983, and they reflect the feelings
of all of us who were part of that evening.

How that evening came about is a story in itself, one that began at the
Academy two years earlier. In November 1981, I had been asked by Douglas Edwards, coordinator of special programs for the Academy, to moderate
a tribute to Ira Gershwin. Doug and I had known each other socially and
professionally for about ten years. Along with thousands of others in the
sixties and seventies, we had come to Hollywood because we wanted to have
something to do with the movies. Dazzled by their history, we were both
a little disillusioned by their present state.

But we loved what films had accomplished in the past; we were-and
are-optimistic about their future; and both of us delighted in putting the best examples of past work before often unknowing but ultimately appreciative audiences. In the case of the Ira Gershwin tribute, this meant looking
at every film for which he had written lyrics and excerpting those to
illustrate every facet of his skill and the enormous range and artistry of his
work. In particular, we wanted to show as much as possible of his lesserknown pieces while highlighting some of the more familiar songs. This took
us from some of his earliest creations, for the shows Lady, Be Good! and
Funny Face, through songs for the Fred Astaire films Shall We Dance? and
Damsel in Distress, to the mini-opera "The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa
Maria," which Gershwin had co-written with Kurt Weill for the film
Where Do We Go from Here.?- the evening ending with Judy Garland
singing "The Man That Got Away."

Before that, however, Doug and I had decided to include a rarity: a piece
that Gershwin had written for A Star Is Born that had not been heard
publicly for twenty-nine years, as it had never been recorded, even though
Garland performed it in the film. It was the commercial for "Trinidad
Coconut Oil Shampoo," and a scratchy, muffled recording of it had been
turned up by Michael Feinstein, who then was working for Ira Gershwin
and assisting us in the preparation of the tribute; I introduced it, commenting that it was one of the pieces cut from the film after its initial release.
The audience listened to it respectfully, but the abysmal quality of the
sound and the lack of visuals caused it to have very little impact.