Judy Garland
In 1950, MGM fired Judy Garland. A year later, Vicente Minnelli and she divorced. At a professional and personal nadir, her personal manager (and eventual third husband) Sid Luft engineered a comeback with concerts at the London Palladium and New York Palace theaters. Their success led him to believe that Garland could return to film an even bigger star, and he thought the perfect vehicle was a musical remake of the 1937 film A Star Is Born. Garland had appeared in a 1942 Lux Radio Theater broadcast of the story (listen here) opposite Walter Pidgeon and had even pitched a musical remake to MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, who turned down the idea because he felt her fans would never accept her as the wife of an alcoholic.
Luft teamed with Edward L. Alperson, who had rights to the 1937 film, and they sold Warner Brothers on the idea. George Cukor was eager to direct, but finding Garland’s costar was difficult. Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Tyrone Power were on a long list of leading men considered. Cukor avidly courted Cary Grant, but when he turned down the role, Luft asked James Mason, who agreed. To complete the team, Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin were hired to write the songs and Moss Hart to adapt the script, and filming began on October 12, 1953.
Cukor dealt not only with constant script changes from Hart but also an unstable leading lady in Garland. Then eight days into production, studio executives decided to switch from filming in WarnerScope, which they felt wasn’t right for the intimate story, and arranged with Twentieth Century-Fox to use CinemaScope, which meant that considerable footage was to be scrapped and filmed again — at a cost of $300,000. These delays and Cukor’s perfectionism stretched the shooting schedule from three months to nearly seven and the budget from $2 million to $5 million.
Principal photography was completed on February 13, and the final sequence (the “Born in a Trunk” medley) was filmed on July 28. The first test screening in August ran 196 minutes, and despite positive feedback from the audience, Cukor trimmed it to 182 minutes. Widely marketed as Garland’s triumphant return to the screen, the picture was given the largest opening gala that Hollywood had seen in years. On Sep. 29, 1954, spotlights swirled over the Pantages Theatre, and more than 20,000 fans jammed the sidewalks, covered live for the first time on television from coast to coast.
Life called it “a brilliantly staged, scored, and photographed film, worth all the effort,” and New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote the film was “one of the grandest heartbreak dramas that has drenched the screen in years.” Time wrote that Garland “gives what is just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history,” and Newsweek said the film is “a thrilling personal triumph for Judy Garland.”
Despite the acclaim, Warner executives were concerned the running time would limit the number of daily showings, so they made another round of cuts — without Cukor. At its final running time of 154 minutes, the film lost crucial dramatic scenes in the development of the relationship between the leading couple and the musical numbers “Lose That Long Face” (watch here) and “Here’s What I’m Here For” (watch here). Cukor and Garland were unhappy with the choices. The film earned six Oscar nominations, including actor (Mason) and actress (Garland), but won none.
In 1982, film preservationist Ronald Haver found some missing scenes in the Warner film vaults, including the two cut songs, and a 176-minute version was released, with the missing footage reconstructed using pan and scan of production stills. In 1984, more discoveries were made, and another restored version was issued. Afterward, yet another small piece of footage was found: “When My Sugar Walks Down the Street” (watch here) from the “Born in a Trunk” sequence.
The film was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000 and ranked #7 on AFI’s list of greatest musicals, while the song “The Man That Got Away” (watch here) ranked #11 among AFI’s top songs.
There have been two more adaptations of the 1937 story: in 1976 starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and in 2018 starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
Listen to the soundtrack, then rent or purchase the film through Amazon Prime. TCM regularly broadcasts the film, and it will next on July 12 at 4:45 p.m. ET. For more about the making of the 1952 film, read Ronald Haver’s A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (1988).
NEXT, look for Jailhouse Rock (1957), starring Elvis Presley as a construction worker who learns music from his prison cellmate (Mickey Shaughnessy), then becomes a chart-topping star (and selfish lout) after he’s released. The title song (watch here) by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller is often cited as Presley’s greatest onscreen moment. Most of the soundtrack was released on a rare EP.
THEN, explore New York, New York (1977), the one musical directed by Martin Scorsese, about the marriage and divorce of a jazz saxophonist (Robert De Niro) and a pop singer (Liza Minnelli), who both achieve fame with the same song, “New York, New York” (watch here), the highlight of the score written by John Kander and Fred Ebb.