A Star Is Born ***** (1954, Judy Garland, James Mason, Charles Bickford, Jack Carson) – Classic Movie Review 1,125

Judy Garland and James Mason are at their wonderful best as the doomed star Hollywood couple in George Cukor’s triumphant 1954 classic musical film A Star Is Born.

Director George Cukor’s triumphant 1954 classic musical film A Star Is Born is a stupendous remake of the 1937 Fredric March-Janet Gaynor classic A Star Is Born. Judy Garland and James Mason are at their wonderful best as the doomed star Hollywood couple, she a shooting star rising actress and he an alcoholic fading star. She tries to catch a falling star, but…

Garland gives a spellbinding performance as the farm girl Esther Blodgett, who is turned into the alluring new screen sensation Vicki Lester. The Wizard of Oz aside, it is perhaps Garland’s best film thanks to her tremendous energy, vulnerability, comic touch and vocal power. Just look at her in marvellous numbers like Oscar-nominated ‘The Man that Got Away’ and the thrillingly extended ‘Born in a Trunk’ routine. In a much less showy, and on paper much less rewarding role, Mason is magnificent. He matches Garland all the way (except in the musical numbers of course) and is a tower of strength in supporting her as the fading star Norman Maine.

Yet everything about this movie is magnificent. The star duo are backed up by the most polished work from the distinguished star character actors of the era, like Charles Bickford, Jack Carson, Tommy Noonan, Amanda Blake, Lucy Marlow and Irving Bacon. The incisive screenplay, exquisitely written by Moss Hart, carefully builds on the 1937 original.

And it’s a musical of course. The songs are breath-taking, from the throat-grabbing ‘Born in a Trunk’ ( (Roger Edens music, Leonard Gershe lryics) to all the six show-stopping Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin tunes ‘The Man That Got Away’, ‘Someone At Last’, Gotta Have Me Go with You, Here’s What I’m Here For, It’s a New World and Lose That Long Face.

And it is all pulled beautifully together by troubled but fired-up director Cukor’s painstakingly skilful and inspired direction under very great difficulties. He had to deal with constant script changes and an unstable leading lady plagued by chemical dependencies, extreme weight fluctuations, and real and imagined illnesses. And, after he had shot much footage, studio executives decided the film should be Warner Bros first in CinemaScope, so everything was scrapped and filmed again.

The long, show-stopping ‘Born in a Trunk’ sequence was added after Cukor had left, supervised by Garland’s professional mentor, Roger Edens. It incorporates Swanee (George Gershwin), I’ll Get By (Roy Turk and Fred E. Ahlert), You Took Advantage of Me (Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers), The Black Bottom (Perry Bradford), The Peanut Vendor (Moises Simons) and My Melancholy Baby (Ernie Burnett and George A. Norton).

It cost over $5 million, making it one of the most expensive films ever made in Hollywood at the time, but it did very well at the box office and attracted huge crowds.

Annoyingly, the film was cut from 181 minutes after its initial screenings to a version running 154 minutes, and this was the version always screened for many years. The film had lost two major musical numbers and crucial dramatic scenes, and Cukor called it very painful to watch. But finally the painstakingly reconstructed 1983 version restored 22 minutes of the missing footage. With some of the footage still missing, it had to be reconstructed using pan and scan of production stills, accompanied by the restored dialogue. The original multi-track stereophonic sound is also restored. The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Warner Bros collaborated on the reconstruction.

In June 2010, Warner released the film on Blu-ray and DVD. The original production negative has been restored and transferred to video at 6K resolution, one of the first films transferred at such a high rate, but no new footage has been found.

There were six Oscar nominations, including best actor (Mason) and actress (Garland), but shamefully no wins at all. However, Garland and Mason won Golden Globes. Mason was only cast after Cary Grant repeatedly turned down the role, preferring to travel with his wife Betsy Drake and being concerned about Garland’s reputation for unreliability. Mason starred with Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

Judy Garland had not made a movie since her MGM contract ended after Royal Wedding in 1950, and the film was promoted heavily as her comeback. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and NBC, which was televising the ceremony, sent a film crew to the hospital room where she was recuperating after giving birth to her son Joey to carry her acceptance speech live if she won. But she lost to Grace Kelly’s modest performance in the weak and forgotten The Country Girl.

Cukor had declined to direct the original 1937 Fredric March-Janet Gaynor film because it was too similar to his 1932 What Price Hollywood?

It is remade as the 1976 A Star Is Born with Barbra Streisand and the 2018 A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga.

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