A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (8 page)

Born Hyman Arluck in 1905, Arlen was raised in Buffalo, New York; the
son of a Jewish cantor, he sang in the choir of his father's synagogue as a child. His love and talent for music were shaped by his heritage, with its
strong religious roots, and his environment, which was as varied as his
melodies. At his mother's insistence, he began studying piano with a neighborhood teacher at the age of nine; later, he studied the classics with a
downtown instructor. As his musical knowledge grew, so did his restlessness: in 1921, when he was seventeen, he dropped out of high school to
pursue a career in music. He had a passion for jazz, and he refined it by
arranging, singing, and playing for a group called the Snappy Trio, which
found ready employment in the cabarets of Buffalo's red-light district. The
trio became a quintet, the Southbound Shufflers-a prophetic name, because to anyone who loved music and show business as Hyman Arluck did,
there was only one place to go.

He arrived in New York late in 1925, when the city was at the height
of its influence as the center of American popular music and theater. He
came armed with one published song, a piano piece called "Blues Fantasy,"
and a new name, Harold Arlen. His original hope was to be a singer, but
in 1930 he had his first hit as a songwriter-"Get Happy," written with
Ted Koehler, which ended up in a show called The 9:15 Revue. After that,
his singing career was put to rest. He composed some of the Cotton Club's
legendary shows and added work in radio, films, and particularly the Broadway musical theater. It was while composing for a 1934 revue called Life
Begins at 8.40 that he met the man who would eventually write the lyrics
for A Star Is Born: Ira Gershwin.

In collaboration with his celebrated brother, George, Gershwin had
become a gifted practitioner of the art of lyric writing. Born and raised in
New York City, he was a child of the popular culture of the time, especially
vaudeville and Broadway. Quieter and more introspective than his brother,
Ira was a peace-loving, easygoing man with an ever-present cigar and an
impish twinkle in his eyes that belied his placidity. His first published song,
in 1917, gives some indication of his irreverence with its cautionary title,
"You May Throw All the Rice You Desire (But Please, Friends, Throw No
Shoes)." Gershwin was an erudite and learned man who spent much time
studying the relationship between music and verse. He had a particular
knack for utilizing slang, which he alternated with some of the most clever,
literate, and graceful combinations of words ever put to music. With his
brother he had co-written the songs for eighteen shows; for one of them,
1932'S Of Thee I Sing, he became the first lyricist ever to be awarded a
Pulitzer Prize. In the course of working together on Life Begins at 840 (the title was a Gershwin variation on the best-seller Life Begins at Forty),
Gershwin and Arlen formed a close and lasting friendship.

After George's death in 1937, Ira was coaxed out of temporary retirement by Moss Hart, who prevailed on him to supply the lyrics to Lady in
the Dark in 1941. Following his work with Weill, he had collaborated with
the cream of American composers, including Jerome Kern, Aaron Copland,
Arthur Schwartz, and Harry Warren, on a number of shows and films.
When the offer came for A Star Is Born, Gershwin had just finished work
with Burton Lane on MGM's Give a Girl a Break, a "little" picture about
kids trying to break into show business. After seeing a rough cut, his wife,
Lenore, asked him if he owned any stock in the company. When he told
her he did, her advice was succinct: "Sell it!"

After signing Arlen and Gershwin, Sid Luft continued wooing Cary Grant.
"I'm taking Cary to the races virtually every day. I'd pick him up, we'd go
to Hollywood Park. Just because you go to the races with a guy, you don't
necessarily talk business to him. First of all, his maximum bet was ten
dollars and he'd only bet on [jockey Willie] Shoemaker." But Luft did
manage to find out what Grant's price was, and it was stiff: "His deal was
one thing and one thing only-three hundred thousand dollars against io
percent of the gross. I told that to Jack, who said, `Offer him a flat four
fifty'-he would not give him io percent of the gross at all." Warner's
willingness to go as high as he did indicates that he was already thinking
beyond the fairly modest original budget of $1,5oo,ooo. Added to the
money already committed in salaries, his offer to Grant boosted the preproduction cost of A Star Is Born to $ i million, which meant that the picture
could conceivably end up with a $3 million budget-a considerable sum for
what was planned as an intimate musical drama with few characters and
no lavish production numbers.

Two of MGM's most recent spectacular musicals, An American in Paris
and Show Boat, had both cost about that much, but they had been made
with people under contract to the studio, while for A Star Is Born, all talent
had to be contracted individually at considerably higher costs. At $3 million, A Star Is Born would have to gross nearly double that just to break
even, and the highest gross on any Garland film had been the $7 million
from 1948's Easter Parade, in which she had co-starred with Fred Astaire.
Warner, gambler that he was, was obviously playing against the odds and betting heavily on Garland's resurgent popularity-which, judging from
the amount of coverage and audience response she continued to generate,
was bigger and more broadly based than ever before.

While Luft wooed Grant and the budget escalated, Moss Hart, happily
ensconced in Palm Springs, was beginning his work on the screenplay.
Since no scripts of the original were available, Hart prepared himself by
watching the 1937 film several times, outlining the structure, the main
characters, and situations that could be retained in his musical treatment.

In the Academy Award-winning story by director William Wellman
and writer Robert Carson, the heroine, Esther Blodgett, is a movie-struck
kid who lives on a North Dakota farm with her uncle and her aunt, who
discourages notions of "Hollywood foolishness" in her niece. Only her
grandmother encourages her dreams of getting into the movies; she gives
Esther her life savings to finance a trip to Hollywood.

In Hollywood, Esther is befriended by Danny McGuire, a young assistant director, who gets her a one-night stint as a cocktail waitress at the
home of producer Oliver Niles. There she meets a drunken but charming
Norman Maine, the biggest star in Hollywood. He is smitten by her youth,
beauty, and innocence and convinces Niles to screen-test her. Niles gives
her a contract because she is wholesome and natural, and he thinks public
taste is swinging back that way.

As Vicki Lester, Esther gets her big break when she is given a lead
opposite Maine. She becomes a star, and they are married; but his career
flounders because of his drinking and his contract is not renewed by the
studio. He shows up drunk at the Academy Awards ceremony, where Vicki
wins the Best Actress Oscar; he interrupts her speech to tell off the assembled group and in so doing accidentally slaps Vicki across the face. Confined to a sanitarium to cope with his alcoholism, Maine is visited by Niles,
who offers him a small part in a new film. A proud man, Maine refuses.

After his release from the sanitarium, Maine is publicly humiliated at
the bar of the Santa Anita race track by his arch-nemesis, Matt Libby,
Niles's press chief. Going off on a three-day bender, Maine is bailed out
of the drunk tank by Vicki, who thereupon tells Niles that she is giving up
her career to care for Norman. Maine overhears Niles tell Vicki that she
is making an empty gesture, that there's nothing left of Norman to save;
unable to change her mind, he wishes her good luck. Maine, unable to stand the thought that he will be responsible for the end of his wife's career,
swims out to sea and drowns.

Vicki decides to give up Hollywood and go home to North Dakota, but
her grandmother suddenly arrives and convinces her that she must stay,
because Norman would have wanted her to. Vicki, her grandmother,
Danny McGuire, and Oliver Niles go to the opening of her newest picture
at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Vicki almost breaks down when she sees
Norman's footprints in the forecourt, but she pulls herself together. Invited
to say something to her millions of fans listening on the radio, she introduces herself by saying, "Hello everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine."

Working with Dorothy Parker and her husband, Alan Campbell, Carson
turned his and Wellman's story (originally called "It Happened in Hollywood") into a screenplay, with uncredited assistance from producer David
0. Selznick and writers Ring Lardner, Jr., and John Lee Mahin. It was
Mahin who came up with the famous curtain line, but it was John Hay
Whitney, millionaire, sportsman, publisher, and chairman of the board of
Selznick's company, who gave the story its new title. When queried by
Selznick for an opinion on the proposed title, "The Stars Below," Whitney
replied in a telegram, "Don't think it [good] ... If poetic title [is wanted,]
what about earlier suggestion of mine 'A Star Is Born'?"

Wellman, who directed the original, always maintained that the story
was made up "from things that just happened." Much of the tale is based
on Hollywood legends; there was a long history of careers ruined by alcoholism and marriages destroyed by the seesaw of Hollywood success and
failure. There is a popular misconception that the suicide of Norman
Maine was inspired by the death of actor John Bowers, who, despondent
over his inability to find work, told friends that he was going to "sail into
the sunset and never come back" and did just that; his body was washed
ashore at Huntington Beach on November 21, 1936. But the suicide scene
of A Star Is Born was filmed three days earlier, on November 18.

The plot of A Star Is Born had a direct antecedent in a film on which
Selznick and Cukor had collaborated at RKO in 1932. What Price Hollywood?, written by Adela Rogers St. John, Jane Murfin, Rowland Brown,
and Gene Fowler, starred Constance Bennett as a movie-struck waitress at
the Brown Derby who is befriended by a drunken director, who gives her
a chance to act in films. She becomes a star and marries a millionaire polo
player, while the director hits the skids. Grateful to him for his early
generosity, she bails him out of night court and takes him to her home, where he kills himself, precipitating a scandal that ruins her career and her marriage. She retires to the south of France, where she is finally reconciled with her husband.

Aside from the basic situation, the only thing the two films have in common is a line which Selznick had liked in the 1932 film. As the actress takes leave of the director just before his suicide, he calls to her and she turns, questioningly. "I just wanted to hear you speak again," he says. Changed to "I just wanted to take another look at you," this was used twice in A Star Is Born, once at the end of Esther and Maine's first meeting and then again just before his fateful swim.

It took Wellman fifty-two scenes, two montages and i 1o minutes to tell this quintessential tale of Hollywood tragedy. The enlightened attitude with which it treated movie-making and movie stars, the lavish Technicolor production, the wit and style of the script and direction, the bittersweet flavor of the romance, and the unusual tragic ending all coalesced into a classic heartbreak drama. The film had served (ironically, in viewing the remake) as a comeback vehicle for Janet Gaynor, whose career had waned in the early 1930s. One of the biggest stars of the late silent period, Gaynor was lovely, sweet, wholesome, and an actress of depth and sensitivity. She had won an Oscar*
for her performances in Seventh Heaven (the first Academy Award ever given to an actress); Street Angel, in which she co-starred with Charles Farrell; and the F. W. Murnau masterpiece Sunrise. Gaynor had successfully made the transition to sound, but the type of films she made and the parts in which she was cast did not keep up with public taste, and by 1935 she was seriously considering retiring from films. Selznick, however, knew her personally and felt that her true personality had never been revealed to moviegoers. She was charming, funny, and sophisticated-qualities germane to the success of the character of Esther Blodgett; combined with Gaynor's air of innocence and vulnerability, they made her performance in the film one of her most memorable and beloved. She was nominated for an Academy Award but lost to Luise Rainer in The Good Earth. (The other nominees were Irene Dunne for The Awful Truth, Greta Garbo for Camille, and Barbara Stanwyck for Stella Dallas.) Still, A Star Is Born had accomplished one of Selznick's objectives: it revitalized Gaynor's career and made her a star all over again.

Because of the picture's constant theatrical circulation all during the
forties, two presentations on the Lux Radio Theatre, and finally as a staple
of early television, the tale was familiar to almost two generations of
moviegoers. Hart's task was to preserve the potent appeal of this Hollywood
myth while making it viable for a modern-day audience. The problem was
complicated by the necessity of rewriting the part of Esther/Vicki to suit
Judy Garland. The original film had walked a delicate dramatic path in
interweaving the lives and careers of Vicki and Norman Maine. In emphasizing the "star power" of Lester/Garland, more screen time would have
to be devoted to her, thus altering the careful balance of the original. Hart
later recalled: "It was a difficult story to do because the original was so
famous and when you tamper with the original, you're inviting all sorts of
unfavorable criticism. It had to be changed because I had to say new things
about Hollywood-which is quite a feat in itself as the subject has been
worn pretty thin. The attitude of the original was more naive because it
was made in the days when there was a more wide-eyed feeling about the
movies ... (and) the emphasis had to be shifted to the woman, rather than
the original emphasis on the Fredric March character. Add to that the
necessity of making this a musical drama, and you'll understand the immediate problems."