A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (7 page)

Across the continent at the Paramount Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, two months after Cinerama's New York splash, another movie
opened. It was Bwana Devil, the low-budget potboiler that Sid Pink had
been selling to investors on the strength of the dailies. The reviews of the
film were merciless in their contempt, calling it "inept," "amateurish,"
"boring," and "ludicrous." But there were lines around the block from the
moment the picture opened, so much so that a second theater booked it
within the week. What was pulling people in was the "Natural Vision"
gimmick, which used two cameras and two projectors in synchronization
to give the illusion of depth. True, audiences had to wear special glasses
to view this "third dimension," but that did not seem to deter them one
bit, as they queued up to have natives' spears and leaping lions seemingly
come whizzing out of the screen into their laps. Natural Vision was another
sensation, but a much more economical and practical one than Cinerama,
for it required no extensive theater renovations.

In the weeks after Bwana Devil opened around the country, the money
it continued to generate attracted the notice of everybody in Hollywood,
and for a while Milton Gunzberg, developer and owner of Natural Vision,
was the most sought-after man in town, as most of the studios tried to sign
up his process for their own use. But it was Jack Warner, who knew a good gimmick when he saw it, who got Gunzberg first. On December 19, barely
two weeks after Bwana Devil opened, Warner gleefully announced that the
Natural Vision Corporation had made a five-picture deal with Warner
Bros. and that the company was planning a "full program of pictures
utilizing the process." Remembering the sensation (and the huge profits)
caused by the introduction of sound and color in the late twenties, Warner
told Variety that "the three-dimensional film opens up a new avenue of
expression for the film creator; an avenue, I might say on the basis of some
actual experience, which offers tremendously exciting opportunities for
stirring the emotions of the audience. And what is the sum total of all our
effort if not to stir the emotions?" The problem of the necessary glasses he
dismissed with the prediction that "audiences will wear such viewers as
effortlessly as they wear wrist watches or carry fountain pens." And with
that said, he donned a pair of Polaroid spectacles and posed for a Life
magazine spread.

That same week, on December 17, Warners' legal department had sent the
Transcona contract to Jack Warner for final approval. It had taken three
months for all the parties to agree to the fine points, details, subdivisions,
and thousand-and-one other complications that were spelled out in the
eighteen-page, single-spaced document. Warners was to finance, through
a series of loans, the direct production cost of each of the group of three
films Transcona intended to make. The budgets were set at $500,000 for
Snow Covered Wagons, $650,000 for Man 0' War, and $1,500,000 for
A Star Is Born, which were the average costs for Warners' own Westerns
and musicals. Garland was to be paid $ioo,ooo for performing in A Star
Is Born; but, interestingly enough, there is a sentence in the same paragraph that states, "Transcona is not entitled to include in the budget of
any photoplay produced hereunder any of Transcona's overhead or corporate operating expense. The contract continued:

[If Transcona is] required to expend more than the budgeted cost of a
photoplay to complete it, then Warners will advance the additional financing. If Transcona spends more than io% in excess of the budgeted cost,
then Warner Bros. forthwith has the option to elect whether it shall assume
control of production of the photoplay involved.... Transcona will endeavor
not to have the final screenplay [for A Star Is Born] exceed 125 pages in length ... and the principal photography including all montages, etc. of any
photoplay (in which Miss Judy Garland) appears shall not require more than
54 production days.... When any photoplay has been previewed, "sneak,"
press, or public, on two (2) different occasions, Warner Bros. has the right,
in its sole discretion, to re-cut or re-edit with a view to giving it the highest
box-office appeal to the general public. Transcona grants Warners the right
to retain and use all so-called cut-outs, negative trims, key shots, and deleted
portions of the photoplays for its film library [or] Warner Bros. may dispose
of the balance of said footage, if any remaining from said photoplays, as junk.

Under this contract, Warners received the right to distribute the film for
twelve years and would split the profits fifty-fifty with Transcona after
agreed-upon expenses. Warner Bros. also agreed that the "cost of advertising, publicizing, and exploitation [of A Star Is Born] shall not exceed
... $175,ooo." For its part, Transcona agreed that it "would secure and
immediately assign to Warners ... all rights in and to the screenplay [A
Star Is Born ] ... based on the literary property used as a basis of a photoplay
... Transcona has the right to grant [these rights] to Warner Bros. There
are not and will not be any claims, etc. against any of said photoplays which
can interfere with Warners' rights." Specifically, this last referred to the
chain of ownership that gave Alperson/Transcona all the rights to remake
the picture and to be able to distribute it anywhere in the world. This minor
sentence and the legal stumbling block it would be was just one of the
unseen perils that would beset Warner, Luft, et al. before the picture was
completed.

Also attached to the contract was a list of acceptable directors and
players. Laurence Olivier topped the list for Garland's leading man and had
already been cabled by Jack Warner to inquire about his interest: he had
none. Number two was Richard Burton, a relative newcomer, under exclusive contract to zoth Century-Fox; inquiries found him unavailable, as he
had been cast in Fox's biblical epic The Robe, which was expected to go
into production shortly. Following him was Tyrone Power, also under
contract to Fox-his price put him out of the running. Then, in order of
preference, came Cary Grant, James Stewart, Glenn Ford, Stewart
Granger, Robert Taylor, Gregory Peck, and Ray Milland. Of all these, the
only name that seemed to delight everyone was Cary Grant; so it was
decided that Luft, as he recalls, "would romance Cary Grant to see if he
would do it."

The list of acceptable directors was short, only six names, all tops in their
field: George Cukor, Daniel Mann, Charles Vidor, Michael Curtiz, Henry
Koster, and John Ford. There was an early rumor that Vidor would do it,
but Luft states emphatically that "Judy wanted George [Cukor] to direct.
He was under contract to Metro, so we started negotiating to get him."
Garland reiterated this herself in an interview in 1953: "I wanted George
... the picture had to be the greatest ... it couldn't be merely very good.
I had too much at stake ... I had to prove things."

George Cukor had been helping performers "prove things" since his
arrival in Hollywood in 1929, under contract to Paramount Pictures as a
"dialogue director" to assist silent film directors in coping with the new
demands of sound. The twenty-nine-year-old had brought with him nearly
two decades of intense fascination and devotion to the theater, first as a
spectator, then as a stage manager/director in stock companies in and
around New York. He and his sister, the only children of a well-to-do
Hungarian family, were raised in an atmosphere of culture and refinement.
Breeding, good manners, and civilized behavior were instilled in him by his
family; but on his own he acquired an acerbic forthrightness, an irreverent
attitude toward most things, and a salty vocabulary to express it. Added to
this was a training in theatrical conventions and traditions brought on by
attending shows two or three times a week. "I saw everything," he recalled.
"New York theatre [was] at a marvelous period and I was right at the hub
of it." He shocked his conservative parents by announcing that he wanted
to go into the theater-"it was as if I'd said I wanted to be a pusher"-and
spent the next several years happily learning, staging little-theater productions with such not-yet-luminaries as Louis Calhern, Miriam Hopkins, and
Bette Davis ("I fired Bette Davis ... because we had nothing for her, and
to this day she still talks about it!"). Eventually, he landed an important
job as assistant to Gilbert Miller, a leading Broadway impresario. Cukor
began directing plays on Broadway at this period, working with Ethel
Barrymore, Laurette Taylor, and Jeanne Eagels, all superb actresses-a
breed that Cukor immediately took to: "Actresses are tougher and more
realistic than men ... you can always talk turkey to them."

Cukor had been snooty about movies; but sound changed his mind, and
when he arrived in Hollywood, he "just took to the movies ... I fell in love
with the movies.... Then I met David Selznick and we became great
friends and he recommended me to Lewis Milestone who was about to
make All Quiet on the Western Front. I started from scratch. I watched and I learned." Quickly, evidently, for he soon received widespread praise
for his direction of Tallulah Bankhead in Tarnished Lady (1931) for Paramount. Cukor then followed Selznick to RKO, where his years of training
and his talent finally were recognized in his work on A Bill of Divorcement,
which started Katharine Hepburn's long film career, and Little Women,
also with Hepburn. He had been with MGM since 1933 and Dinner at
Eight, directing some of that studio's biggest female stars in some of the
most outstanding pictures of the thirties and forties. "Very few of the great
stars of the thirties had theater training," recalls Cukor. "They had something ... quite different, 'personality,' that mysterious thing which touches
an audience's imagination."

It was at MGM that Cukor's path first crossed that of Judy Garland;
they arrived within a year of each other. Though only thirteen, she had had
years of experience in vaudeville as one of the Gumm Sisters; by the time
MGM put her under contract in 1935, the sister act had vanished and in
its place, alone, stood Judy Garland. (The name was a combination of
Hoagy Carmichael's song "Judy" and the "Garland" from George Jessel's
compliment to her, "You're pretty as a garland of flowers.") Her tremendous power and versatility as a singer, her sensitive phrasing and uncanny
ability to get at the meaning of a lyric, her enthusiastic and infectious
personality, marked her as a major star from almost the very start of her
MGM career.

Cukor had almost directed her twice at MGM, first in her childhood
classic The Wizard of Oz and later in 1944 in Meet Me in St. Louis. He
had bowed out of both projects, the first because it was a fantasy, the second
to join the army. But to anyone who delighted in talent the way Cukor did,
Judy Garland was inescapable. He followed her career and her vicissitudes
and, along with everyone else who appreciated her, was alternately amazed
by her gifts, gratified by her success, and saddened by her inability to fully
control her personal demons. "Judy Garland was a most vivid personality,"
he recalls. "She had an innate intelligence to her; she was extremely witty
and one of the best raconteurs I've ever known. But she wasn't one to
confide her problems in others, the great publicity about the precarious
state of her emotions to the contrary. If she did, it was always in a humorous
way, with Judy the butt of the situation. She could talk about the most
devastating experiences of her childhood-this overweight little girl with
the enormous talent-and have you screaming with laughter. She had an
absolutely devastating eye, and while making fun of herself, she could also zero in on the other person being talked about with great humor and style.
She was the most marvelous company." Cukor also vividly recalled something she had done for him in 1949, just before she was fired by MGM:
"I gave a birthday party for Ethel Barrymore-it was her seventieth-and
Judy came and sang 'Happy Birthday' to her. She did it with such feeling
and emotion that I thought Ethel would dissolve in tears. Anyone who
could sing like that, I thought, had the emotional ability to be a great
dramatic actress. That was the first time I got the idea I wanted to direct
Judy." When the offer came, in mid-December 1952, to do just that with
A Star Is Bom, Cukor jumped at the chance. He was then working on a
loan-out to Columbia directing Judy Holliday in a script by his friends Ruth
Gordon and Carson Kanin called It Should Happen to You. The previous
year Holliday, under Cukor's guidance, had won the Academy Award for
Best Actress in Born Yesterday, edging out Bette Davis for All About Eve
and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard. After It Should Happen to You
finished production in January 1953, Cukor was to take a two-month
European vacation, returning to the United States in early spring of 1953,
at which time he would begin working with Garland and Luft on A Star
Is Born.

By the end of December, Luft recalls: "We had Moss working on the
script, we had an agreement with George, and I'm taking Cary Grant to
the races virtually every day, trying to get him to do the picture.... Judy
and I used to go out with Cary and Betsy [Drake, then his wife] once a
week-we'd go to Chasen's, to Romanoff's, their house, our house, we were
so close I was beginning to talk like him.... We were gonna do this picture
together."

At about the same time, Irving Lazar stepped in and solved a very thorny
problem: Who would write the lyrics to Harold Arlen's music? Arlen had
collaborated with several lyricists throughout his twenty-year career, most
notably Ted Koehler, with whom he had written "Stormy Weather";
E. Y. ("Yip") Harburg, who had lyricized The Wizard of Oz and the hit
show Bloomer Girl; and Johnny Mercer, who had written "Blues in the
Night," "Star Spangled Rhythm," and "St. Louis Woman." Arlen's last
film work had been with lyricist Dorothy Fields at loth Century-Fox in
1952: another musical remake, The Farmer Takes a Wife, starring Betty
Grable.