A Star Is Born (1937) and (1954): Deja Views

The latest reincarnation of a classic Hollywood story is about to hit the big screen this week with the opening of Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star Is Born starring himself opposite Lady Gaga as the leading lady, the soon-to-be star of the title. There’s a lot of buzz about this new version of the story, largely because Lady Gaga is already a superstar entertainer; but this is her first legitimate acting role.  Cooper’s acting chops are largely acknowledged – he’s been nominated for three Oscars already (for Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and American Sniper) – so it’s no surprise to hear that he’s good in this film. But as an actor, Ms. Gaga is a newbie, so people are (a) excited and (b) wondering how she’ll do. Worry not. The word on the street is that she’s terrific.

As your servant, I thought it would behoove me to check out some previous versions of this tale, in order to provide myself – and my readers – with a basis for comparison, once I take in the latest remake. So today I’ll be reviewing the first A Star is Born, from 1937, and the first remake of the story from seventeen years later in 1954. I’ve not seen, and I don’t plan to see the 1976 version, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, because it’s reputed to be pretty bad; whereas the two earlier versions are each generally considered to be classics. As we’ll see, those two are actually quite different from one another, although they share a nearly identical story.

The basic plot goes like this – and if you have no idea about the story, this is technically a spoiler; but really, you have no idea? Anyway, a famous actor discovers and helps a young actress. Predictably, they fall in love. As she becomes a huge success, his career tragically fades. There are no big surprises; rather, our interest depends on, and ideally will be stirred by, the quality of the story’s rendering: the direction, screenplay, photography, casting and, especially, the acting.

The 1937 A Star Is Born stars the lovely and wonderful Janet Gaynor, a huge star of the day, as Esther Blodgett, a farm girl from North Dakota who wants to be somebody, and who dreams of becoming a star of the silver screen in burgeoning Hollywood. Gaynor was one of those Hollywood success stories herself, who worked her way up from bit parts to winning the very first Academy Award for best actress in 1929 for three movies (the only time the award has been given for multiple roles): 7^th Heaven (1927), Sunrise (1927) and Street Angel (1928). She was nominated again for her performance in A Star Is Born. As Esther, Gaynor is convincingly sweet and naïve at first, arriving in tinsel-town knowing no one, with little cash, but with a heart full of hope. She quickly learns that she’s one of thousands of aspiring stars and that her chances of success are minimal – a talent agent informs her the odds are about one in a hundred thousand. “But maybe I’m that one”, she says.

Esther makes a friend of a fellow resident at her rooming house, Danny McGuire, a relatively lowly assistant director - played by the great Andy Devine (a character actor who I grew up enjoying as “Jingles”, the hero’s sidekick in the 1950’s TV series The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock) – and Danny eventually gets her a one-night gig waitressing at a big Hollywood party, where she meets her idol, the handsome box office sensation Norman Maine, played by the handsome Hollywood star Fredric March – who already had an Oscar on his shelf for playing the title characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and would win another for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), as well as leading roles in wonderful films like Design for Living (1933), Anna Karenina (1935), Inherit the Wind (1960). Unlike March, Norman Maine’s best years are behind him due to high living and in particular his heavy drinking. But he’s attracted to Esther and, admiring her innocence and determination, he gets his studio to sign her up and give her a chance. The studio gives her a new name, “Vicki Lester”, and pretty soon Esther/Vicki is on her way. She’s got “it” – that unquantifiable magnetic quality that just works on the screen. The public loves her.

Meanwhile, Norman and Esther/Vicki fall in love. When he promises to stop drinking, she agrees to marry him; and they really do seem to be lovebirds. The tragedy of the story is that, of course, Norman can’t keep his promise, and his career is going down the tubes as hers is soaring. Can such a marriage last?

The movie is many things: a passionate love story, a behind the scenes peek at the movie business, an often witty and sometimes silly comedy (yes, really), an homage to the American dream, and a surprisingly affecting melodrama. Director William Wellman does a great job of balancing all these elements so that they all work and moving things along briskly so we in the audience stay interested. A hard-drinking, tough guy, “Wild Bill” Wellman had been a director for seventeen years by the time he filmed A Star is Born and knew what he was doing. His 1927 movie, Wings, won the very first Oscar for best picture in 1929. Some of the other noteworthy films he helmed include The Public Enemy (1931), which not only launched the career of James Cagney but is credited with being the godfather (so to speak) of the classic gangster movie genre; Wild Boys of the Road and Heroes for Sale, from 1933, two classic depression era films reviewed here in 2012; Beau Geste (1939) with Gary Cooper; The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) with Henry Fonda; and The High and Mighty (1954) with John Wayne; among many others.

One of the great things about this first version of A Star is Born are the contributions of the supporting cast. I’ve already mentioned Andy Devine as Danny McGuire. There’s also Adolphe Menjou as Oliver Niles, the head of Niles Studios, who has produced all of Norman Maine’s movies and is now managing Vicki Lester’s career. Although such guys are typically demonized in backstage-Hollywood pictures, Niles is a surprisingly compassionate movie mogul, and a friend to both actors. Then there’s Matt Libby the PR huckster for the studio who hates Maine even as he’s promoting him, and can't wait to kick him when he’s down.  He’s a jerk but mostly a funny one as played by Lionel Stander. Stander's name may not be familiar to you, but his gravelly voice and ascerbic manner will be, if you’ve seen a bunch of old movies or if you're a fan of the old Hart to Hart TV series (late 1970s - 1980s).  I don’t want to leave out May Robson [Kate Hepburn’s aunt in Bringing Up Baby (1938)] as Esther’s inspiring grandmother.  Also making the most of a small part is Edgar Kennedy as Esther’s world-weary boarding house landlord.

Another great thing about this production is that it’s actually in Technicolor – quite a rarity for 1937 (two years before The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, for example). And it looks pretty good, too.

Ultimately, of course, the movie rides on the performances of the two leads, and both Gaynor and March are excellent. With a high degree of credibility (especially for a 1930s film), she goes through multiple changes as, by turns, a dreamy farm girl, plucky job seeker, excited ingenue, giddy romantic partner, loyal helpmate and, finally, grieving survivor. He too shows many facets: initially a charming (and narcissistic) celebrity; then a guy besotted with love, an empathetic mentor, an uxorious husband, an alcoholic struggling for sobriety and, ultimately, a tragic figure sacrificing himself for love and honor.  As I may have mentioned, Gaynor and March each received Academy Award nominations for their efforts here

If the Janet Gaynor A Star Is Born has a fault it’s that it fails to show us the work that went into Esther/Vicki’s rise to super-stardom. Mention is made of her hard work, but we don’t see that, just her success – as if she was simply a natural actress all along … which is not all that credible. But that’s a quibble; it certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment of the picture. The movie comes in at a trim hour and fifty minutes – just right in my book.

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By contrast to the original version, the 1954 remake of A Star Is Born is an epic! Coming in at just under three hours, it’s long enough to include an intermission about half-way through. It’s not only in Technicolor but ultra-widescreen CinemaScope as well. And, as you probably know, this version is a musical – with new songs by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin and a medley of other familiar numbers, all featuring the film’s star (and co-producer) Judy Garland.

The plot is essentially the same as in the original, except that Esther is a singer (naturally) who eventually becomes a big star of movie musicals. When we first meet her, she’s a vocalist with a traveling stage show called the Glenn Williams Orchestra.  The scenes with Esther’s family in North Dakota are eliminated.

If you’re a Garland fan, this is the version for you. There’s at least a half hour of her performing and singing - starting in the opening moments as we’re introduced to the big movie star Norman Maine, this time played with great vitality by James Mason. There’s a big Hollywood benefit going on, a variety show called “A Night of the Stars”, at the fabled Shrine Auditorium in L.A. and everyone is there. Everyone except Maine – who’s late and unaccounted for. When he eventually shows, drunk as a skunk but in high spirits, he goes backstage and causes a ruckus, then staggers onto the stage in the middle of the Glenn Williams Orchestra production – and thus disrupts Esther in the middle of her number Gotta Have Me Go With You – rather the opposite of a meet-cute situation – whereupon she somehow manages to handle the sloshed actor, and in the process piques his interest. The rest, as they say, is history, played out in a manner much like the 1937 movie. But with quite a lot of song and dance this time.

There’s the aforementioned medley – the centerpiece of Esther’s breakout movie - in which she, now rechristened Vicki Lester, belts out seven songs including Born In A Trunk, Swanee, The Black Bottom and Melancholy Baby over fifteen dazzling minutes, just before intermission. This bit was a last-minute add-on after primary production of A Star Is Born was completed – reputedly in order to highlight Garland’s versatility (which it certainly does). Another highlight is Garland’s cute, athletic, six-minute rendition of the song Someone at Last, which Esther/Vicki sings to Norman at home to reenact for him a production number she was working on at work that day.

The 1954 version of the story was written by Moss Hart [The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)] and directed by the great and prolific George Cukor [Dinner At Eight (1933), The Women (1939), Gaslight (1944), My Fair Lady (1964)], who coincidentally also directed a film with a remarkably similar story that some claim was the basis for A Star Is Born in the first place, something called What Price Hollywood in 1932.  Nevertheless, my sense is that this one got away from him, perhaps because it was produced by Garland and her then husband Sidney Luft.

The Garland movie was very popular in its day – receiving six Oscar nominations including for best actor and actress - and did quite well at the box office. Even today many consider this one of the greatest musicals ever. To me, however, the film is overlong, and whatever its merits back in the day, it feels bloated now. Maybe if I was more of a Garland fan, I’d feel differently, I don’t know. But the music composed for the film is not all that terrific, compared, for example, to some of the standards in the medley, and Garland’s belt-it-out style of singing is not my favorite.

Then there is this strange montage thing: about forty minutes in, the film introduces a series of sepia-toned photographs of the various characters frozen in action, one after the other, while the soundtrack just continues along with dialogue - a number of little vignettes apparently - that is more or less synchronized with the photos; and this continues for several minutes, punctuated every so often by a few seconds of live action  – all of which seems meant to move the story along over a period of weeks or months. Then we’re back to the movie. I’ve never seen anything like it; and I can’t say it makes any sense.  

Comparing the quality of the lead actors’ performances to the much tighter 1937 original, I’d say they are pretty close; and although I liked Fredric March a lot, I think that James Mason may be better. For pure acting, i.e. leaving out the music, I’d have to give Gaynor the edge over Garland, but both are quite good. When it comes to the supporting ensemble, on the other hand, the earlier movie is far better. As I noted in my review of the 1937 A Star Is Born, the fine work of the well-cast character actors adds a richness and enjoyment to that film. Most of the secondary characters in the 1954 movie are far less interesting, endearing or funny. Jack Carson’s Matt Libby, the studio PR guy is a dull oaf compared to Lionel Stander’s version. Tommie Noonan as Esther’s friend Danny McGuire (a piano player in the remake) is pretty much a non-entity, except for one brief scene, and he doesn’t hold a candle to Andy Devine. There’s no grandmother character in the 1954 movie, so there’s no one to compare to the warm, encouraging May Robson. The only close call in the supporting cast is Charles Bickford, who is fine as studio head Oliver Niles, and yet not as sympathetic as Adolphe Menjou in the original.

If you love musicals and/or you really dig Judy Garland – and if you’ve got three hours available – I suspect you will like the 1954 A Star Is Born a lot and may prefer it to the 1937 film. Otherwise, I’d recommend the original. Better still, try them both – always an interesting exercise. With one or both of these movies under your belt, you’ll be all set for the 2018 picture (opening October 5th).

A Star Is Born (1937) is available for subscribers to FilmStruck, Amazon Prime, Fandor and Kanopy; and to rent on several pay-per-view streaming services including Amazon and iTunes.

A Star Is Born (1954) is available for subscribers to FilmStruck, and to rent on several pay-per-view streaming services including Amazon, Vudu and iTunes. It’s also available on DVD from Netflix.