A Star is Born

George Cukor's sublime take on stardom ranks among Judy Garland's best work, but its production was mired in public and private turmoil.

It’s not ideal, but remains preferable to the shorter cut which removes so much of the romantic build-up in the first half, and essentially hobbles the viewing experience. It was later nominated for six Academy Awards and won precisely none, Garland losing out to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl – a shocking decision facilitated in part by Warners’ lack of campaign support. “A Star is Shorn” reckoned the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, and poor word of mouth subsequently killed the commercial prospects for the truncated 154-minute edit. She was the breadwinner for her family, since her mother and second husband squandered much of her MGM earnings in a welter of poor investment decisions. Given the pressure Garland was under and Sid Luf t’s production inexperience, Warner brothers insisted on junking the first month’s footage so it could be redone in the new widescreen, CinemaScope format designed to lure audiences away from TV. Cukor’s exacting demands also took time, and that was before the realisation that a genuine show-stopping number was required to sell Garland’s Vicki Lester as a peerless performer – whereupon they went back and assembled the lengthy Born in a Trunk medley (without Cukor, by this time on his next project), which tells Garland’s own life story of pluck and determination in song. The shoot was long and complicated and expensive. He knows she knows it too, and talks him into quitting the band for a tilt at the big time. There, Janet Gaynor was an actress making it big while her lover, established star Frederic March, hit the skids, but Hart rejigged the background to bring in a musical angle for Garland. He also knew the degree to which her own personal issues made her a unique fit for the story, since the central characters Vicki Lester and Norman Maine are basically portraits of the conflict raging within Garland herself – both self-destructive addict and the empowering saviour. When he sobers up and finds her again, hearing her deliver The Man That Got Away in a late-night club convinces him she’s ready for stardom. Add to that dazzling production numbers, the timeless craft of the Great American Songbook, and brilliantly written melodrama too, where egotism and frailty collide in the high-stakes arena of screen stardom. MGM boss Louis B Mayer was also intent on keeping Garland’s weight down, hence there were more diet pills and the studio canteen were under instructions to restrict her to chicken soup only, with the chicken bits and matzo balls removed. Choose one film to represent the essence of golden-age Hollywood, and George Cukor’s A Star is Born could well be a contender.