Judy Garland has been associated with MGM since she was 13 years old.
The actress was one of the most valuable and profitable "assets" of the company, but since her marriage in 1945 with the director Vincente Minnelli, her depressive tendencies, her addiction to barbiturates and her behaviors have worsened.
Judy Garland was separated from the filming of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and Royal Wedding (1951), and after three reprimands with their respective suspensions, on September 29, 1950, she was fired from the studio, "with reluctance and regret," as Louis B. Mayer announced it, "and to serve her own interests." They couldn't really trust Judy Garland anymore.
That same year, in December, she would divorce Minnelli. He writes in his autobiography: “It was clear that she had failed Judy. The periods of her life when she had been mostly unable to face the world coincided with the years of our marriage. This was an accusation that could not be ignored. But in turn, Judy had failed me. She was never going to be able to, or want to, make a home with me. Our future was always going to be vitiated by her nervous and emotional instability ”(1). Judy Garland's private life and artistic career seemed to be collapsing. And she was only 28 years old.
The following year she would become romantically involved with her manager, Sidney Luft, whom she would marry in 1952. “Her third marriage of hers to Luft had caused her career to take an unpredictable turn and she began to go upwards. Luft became his personal agent and the concerts that the Garland at the London Palladium and the Palace in New York in 1951 and 1952 were so many triumphs”.
However, the couple's interest was that she return to the cinema and the vehicle they thought of was making a remake of A Star is Born, 1937, originally directed by William A. Wellman and produced by David O.selznick. The rights for a new adaptation had been auctioned in the forties and the producer Edward Alperson acquired them. He, Luft, and Garland partnered and created a production company, Trascona Enterprises, to make the film. In December 1952 it was announced that this company had closed an agreement with Warner to make A Star Is Born and eight other films. Of the nine, three would have Judy Garland as the protagonist.
Trascona hired playwright Moss Hart to adapt the story and Luft spoke directly with George Cukor to get him to take command of the project. He remembered that he had been offered to do the version of A Star Is Born in 1937, but that he turned it down because he thought it was a copy of What Price Hollywood? (1932) that Cukor himself had directed. However, he was now interested in this remake. “What he liked the most was the prospect of having the Garland. He had never directed it – the closest he got to it was when he directed a week's filming of The Wizard of Oz – but he had always appreciated her and admired that talent that she was not always able to control ”(3). It would also be his first color film for Cukor, his first musical, and the most ambitious project in which she would be involved to date.
After considering Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Tyrone Power, Stewart Granger, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, and Cary Grant (whose refusal was extremely painful for Cukor), they decided on James Mason, a name that did not generate more resistance, but not excessive emotion either. However, the objective was achieved: a competent actor but one that did not overshadow Judy Garland. This had to be her exclusive show. “She had been given a second chance. A third would be of the order of miracles. Her entire future was hanging on just one movie and Judy knew it. A star is born –she told a columnist- it couldn't just be good, it had to be the greatest of all”
Warner and Cukor were preparing for it. The film was shot in CinemaScope, a panoramic system that had debuted with The Robe (1953) and in which there was not much experience yet. For this reason, the director enlisted the help of fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene as a visual and color consultant, and Gene Allen as production designer, two names that would continue to be associated with Cukor's career from now on. Composer Harold Arlen (who had written Over the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz) was attached for the music and Ira Gershwin for the lyrics.
Filming began on October 12, 1953, and concluded on July 28, 1954. The production suffered several delays due to the prolonged absences of Judy Garland, who relapsed into her usual sick leave or exhaustion. Despite that, she was seen at horse races and in nightclubs. “That is the behavior of someone deranged. But there is an arrogance and ruthless selfishness about it that eventually makes one stop feeling compassion for it” (5), declared Cukor. The film would end up costing Warners more than five million dollars.
The premiere of A Star Is Born took place at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles on September 29, 1954. In New York, it would open on October 11. The version by Cukor and the Danish editor Folmar Blangsted had a length of 182 minutes, and that was the one that was released. However, Warner executives considered that this duration was not commercial and after the premieres and the media reviews they made additional cuts -Cukor was filming abroad- leaving it at 154 minutes. The truly disastrous thing was that they melted down the negative of the cut scenes to extract the silver from the celluloid film.
The film was nominated for six Oscars, including best actress for Judy Garland, but won none (she was not present at the ceremony, precisely that night she was giving birth to her son Joseph). The cuts affected the opinion and reception of the public who turned their backs on the film. Warner had advanced money from the alleged profits to Sidney Luft who ended up being sued for not being able to return that money. The studio canceled the contract with Trascona and although Judy Garland received proposals to act in Carousel (Carousel, 1956), South Pacific (1958), and Las tres caras de Eva (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957) she would move away from the cinema, returning just in 1961 to appear in The Nuremberg trial (Judgment at Nuremberg).
In the mid-1970s, the complete soundtrack of the original three-hour cut of A Star Is Born was found, and film historian and archivist Ronald Haver became interested in carrying out a restoration that could only be done in 1981 with the help of the Hollywood Academy. The job involved trawling through private collections that illegally held copies of the film. At the end of the process, there was a 176-minute version that included still photos that replaced the irretrievably lost parts. Thus restored, Haver showed A Star Is Born to Robert Daly, the chairman of Warner Brothers, at a private screening on January 24, 1983. George Cukor was invited to that showing but was unable to attend. On that very day, he passed away.
