A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration by Ronald Haver Page A
Authors: Ronald Haver
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sagas. Gilbert's
career as a major star had ended almost overnight with the advent of talkies,
not because of his voice, which is the legend, but because of poor choices
in stories and roles. Sound rendered his character, the flashing-eyed impassioned lover, ridiculous, and his consequent inability to make himself popular in any other role led to his abrupt decline. Gilbert later married the
young actress Virginia Bruce, and her career forged ahead while his ended
in a paranoid, alcoholic daze. Gilbert's death of heart failure at age thirtyeight came in January 1936, just as work began on the screenplay of A Star
Is Born.
There was more of John Barrymore in Max Carey than there was in
Norman Maine, but the story of a romantic idol who dissipated his gifts
and his career through drink had a ready parallel in the continuing tragedy
of John Barrymore, who had been reduced to reading his lines from cue
cards. The sanitorium sequence, where Niles calls on Maine to offer him
a small part in a film, came from a similar visit George Cukor made to
Barrymore, who had had himself committed in an effort to "dry out" and
go back to work. Cukor related the details of his trip to Wellman and
Selznick, who were working on the screenplay, and they wrote the scene
into the final version.
This original Maine, while a charmer, has an element of coarseness about
him. He nearly disrupts a concert at the Hollywood Bowl; he has very little
regard for other people and is prone to fisticuffs and boorish behavior; he
proposes to Esther at a boxing match while chewing gum and egging on
the fighters. When he drunkenly interrupts Vicki's speech at the Academy Awards to make one of his own, it is to tell off the assembled multitude
("Fellow suckers ...") and to denigrate the award his wife has just received:
"I got one of those things once; they don't mean a thing." His saving graces
are his sense of humor, his charm, and the fact that, as he explains to
Esther, "no matter what else ... I appreciate lovely things"-a line which
took on poignant believability when Fredric March quietly spoke it. In
March's hands and under Wellman's direction, Maine never reveals any
self-doubt or introspection. We know nothing at all of Norman, even where
he came from-not a hint of the inner turmoil that causes his alcoholic
binges. The closest we get to any evidence of self-awareness in Maine is
in the token he hands to Oliver Niles: "Good for Amusement Only." His
sole function, dramatically at least, is to be the deus ex machina-the fairy
godmother who makes everything possible for Cinderella. When she is
"born," so to speak, there is no longer any reason for his existence; and so
he does what all good gods do: he walks into the ocean and disappears,
thereby assuring his immortality.
Moss Hart's version describes Maine as "a `movie star' personified.
Superlative good looks which bear more than just the mark of a photogenic
face.... There is evidence of a deep inner turmoil." The 195os Norman
is an intelligent, semicultured man, with no visible roots or background.
Perceptive and proud, he feels a deep loathing and contempt for the
manner in which he makes his living and for the hypocrisies of so much
of "our industry," as he mockingly refers to it. He is constantly starring in
vapid romantic dramas and empty action films with titles like The Enchanted Hour, The Black Legion, and Another Dawn. The correlative
Hollywood career was that of Errol Flynn, who had reigned supreme at
Warners for almost twenty years; his relationship with Warner was very
similar to Maine's with Niles. Flynn had been released by Warners because
of the very situation that faced Maine: drinking, undependability, and
slipshod performances in lackluster, unimaginative variations on the same
old stories. But Flynn was acutely self-aware, and so is Hart's Maine. "I
know myself very well," he says in the script, "and I'm right near the
fighting stage....
career as a major star had ended almost overnight with the advent of talkies,
not because of his voice, which is the legend, but because of poor choices
in stories and roles. Sound rendered his character, the flashing-eyed impassioned lover, ridiculous, and his consequent inability to make himself popular in any other role led to his abrupt decline. Gilbert later married the
young actress Virginia Bruce, and her career forged ahead while his ended
in a paranoid, alcoholic daze. Gilbert's death of heart failure at age thirtyeight came in January 1936, just as work began on the screenplay of A Star
Is Born.
There was more of John Barrymore in Max Carey than there was in
Norman Maine, but the story of a romantic idol who dissipated his gifts
and his career through drink had a ready parallel in the continuing tragedy
of John Barrymore, who had been reduced to reading his lines from cue
cards. The sanitorium sequence, where Niles calls on Maine to offer him
a small part in a film, came from a similar visit George Cukor made to
Barrymore, who had had himself committed in an effort to "dry out" and
go back to work. Cukor related the details of his trip to Wellman and
Selznick, who were working on the screenplay, and they wrote the scene
into the final version.
This original Maine, while a charmer, has an element of coarseness about
him. He nearly disrupts a concert at the Hollywood Bowl; he has very little
regard for other people and is prone to fisticuffs and boorish behavior; he
proposes to Esther at a boxing match while chewing gum and egging on
the fighters. When he drunkenly interrupts Vicki's speech at the Academy Awards to make one of his own, it is to tell off the assembled multitude
("Fellow suckers ...") and to denigrate the award his wife has just received:
"I got one of those things once; they don't mean a thing." His saving graces
are his sense of humor, his charm, and the fact that, as he explains to
Esther, "no matter what else ... I appreciate lovely things"-a line which
took on poignant believability when Fredric March quietly spoke it. In
March's hands and under Wellman's direction, Maine never reveals any
self-doubt or introspection. We know nothing at all of Norman, even where
he came from-not a hint of the inner turmoil that causes his alcoholic
binges. The closest we get to any evidence of self-awareness in Maine is
in the token he hands to Oliver Niles: "Good for Amusement Only." His
sole function, dramatically at least, is to be the deus ex machina-the fairy
godmother who makes everything possible for Cinderella. When she is
"born," so to speak, there is no longer any reason for his existence; and so
he does what all good gods do: he walks into the ocean and disappears,
thereby assuring his immortality.
Moss Hart's version describes Maine as "a `movie star' personified.
Superlative good looks which bear more than just the mark of a photogenic
face.... There is evidence of a deep inner turmoil." The 195os Norman
is an intelligent, semicultured man, with no visible roots or background.
Perceptive and proud, he feels a deep loathing and contempt for the
manner in which he makes his living and for the hypocrisies of so much
of "our industry," as he mockingly refers to it. He is constantly starring in
vapid romantic dramas and empty action films with titles like The Enchanted Hour, The Black Legion, and Another Dawn. The correlative
Hollywood career was that of Errol Flynn, who had reigned supreme at
Warners for almost twenty years; his relationship with Warner was very
similar to Maine's with Niles. Flynn had been released by Warners because
of the very situation that faced Maine: drinking, undependability, and
slipshod performances in lackluster, unimaginative variations on the same
old stories. But Flynn was acutely self-aware, and so is Hart's Maine. "I
know myself very well," he says in the script, "and I'm right near the
fighting stage....
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