A Star Is Born (1954)

A Star Is Born is one of those classic Hollywood tales that's been don a bunch of times: four under that title, and some would argue that the 1932 film What Price Hollywood? is pretty much the same story. I haven't seen the most recent remake with Lady Gaga, although I think I've done posts on the 1930s and 1970s A Star is Born as well as What Price Hollywood? I saw that the 1954 version starring Judy Garland is on tonight at 8:00 PM, so I watched it off my DVR to do a sort of review on it.

Now, I call it a sort of review because this is the sort of film where I'd guess most people already know the story. Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) is struggling in her career until she's seen by Hollywood star Norman Maine (James Mason) who is painting the town red for the umpteenth time. Maine gets Esther a screen test, and she eventually changes her name to Vicki Lester, becomes a star, and marries Norman. But as Vicki's career rises, Norman drinks more, until the tragic ending.

So, in discussing this version, I think it's a bit better to talk about some of the things that distinguish it from previous versions. The first one is that as the movie opens, Esther is already a singer in a big band, with a maybe-boyfriend in Danny McGuire (Tommy Noonan). Esther having to suffer in the Dakotas during the Depression but with a grandmother with a heart of gold who helps Esther get to Hollywood isn't here at all. (Indeed, the May Robson character is totally written out.) I think that having Esther already have at least a halfway successful career isn't such a good choice. I couldn't help but think of her traveling singer in comparison to the one her real-life daughter Liza Minnelli goes on to play in New York, New York, where it doesn't seem to be that bad a career.

Judy Garland being a singer, there are a lot of musical numbers for her to perform, as that's a talent she definitely had as opposed to Janet Gaynor. Fans of Judy Garland's singing will obviously love the plethora of musical numbers. I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of Garland's singing. The songs help push the movie out to a shade under three hours, which includes a few minutes here and there of production stills with the dialogue track. This last conceit, however, is not like the "restored" version of Greed which added on a good 100 minutes of production stills.

On the plus side is the casting of Charles Bickford in the role of studio boss Oliver Niles, a character played by Adolphe Menjou and done reasonably well. Bickford doesn't have quite the elegance that Menjou always did, although I think that for the dark story line that's something that works even better. Bickford has a sort of bitter elder statesman dignity that I don't think Menjou did. Jack Carson gets a beefed-up role as the publicity agent and is good, although there's that one scene where he's gratuitously nasty to Norman Maine. A reading of the 1937 synopsis points out that the scene is in that movie too, although I didn't remember it, probably because the publicity agent there was played by Lionel Stander who is much lower down the status list than Jack Carson was.

Personally, I prefer the 1937 A Star is Born, but I'm sure many people will greatly enjoy tonight's showing of the 1954 version.