A Star Is Born ***** (1937, Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou) – Classic Movie Review 1124

Fredric March and Janet Gaynor star as an alcoholic leading movie actor on the skids and his young wife whose film career is just taking off in director William A Wellman’s 1937 brilliant, unfaded original film of the famous classic Hollywood weepie story, filmed in glorious Technicolor.

Though this same bitter-sweet sad saga has been told again twice since in the 1954 Judy Garland-James Mason and 1976 Barbra Streisand remakes, this venerable antique thirties version may be overshadowed by them in fame. But in quality it still more than holds its own thanks to the high-powered acting and sparkling screenplay by famous wit Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell and Robert Carson.

With its quality dialogue a gift to the actors, the razor-sharp screenplay acidly and incisively satirises the Hollywood glamour machine. But with many hands at work, it’s not known who wrote what, but when she first saw the film, Parker was proud of her contribution and boasted about both the script and the film.

March and Gaynor are absolutely superb as the fading star Norman Maine and the farm girl Esther Blodgett who’s turned into the alluring new screen sensation Vicki Lester. And there’s a slew of great support performances too from the likes of Adolphe Menjou (long-time producer), Andy Devine (assistant director), May Robson (Esther’s grandmother), Lionel Stander (press agent), Owen Moore (as Casey Burke) and Franklin Pangborn.

Director Wellman and screenwriter Carson an won Oscar for Best Writing Original Story, which is ironic as it is an unofficial part-reworking of 1932’s What Price Hollywood?. The three screenwriters should have had the Oscar for their screenplay of course. And W Howard Greene won a Special Academy Award for his lovely, luminous Technicolor cinematography. 

A 16-year-old Lana Turner allegedly makes her film debut here as an extra: ironically in one of her most famous films, 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful, she plays a star who starts out as an extra. However, Turner often denied this appearance over the years, saying she was discovered several months after the picture had finished production. Yet it is more likely a story than the legendary PR-driven story of Turner being discovered at a Hollywood drug store. 

In this version, as a student at Hollywood High School, Turner skipped a typing class and bought a Coke at the Top Hat Malt Shop on the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and McCadden Place, where she was spotted by William R Wilkerson, publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. Attracted by her beauty and figure, he referred her to the actor-talent agent Zeppo Marx, who signed her to his agency.

Some say the marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay was the film’s real-life inspiration. John Bowers has also been identified as inspiration for the Norman Maine character and the dramatic suicide-by-drowning scene near the end of the film.

A Star Is Born (1954) and A Star Is Born (1976) followed.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1124 derekwinnert.com