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A screenplay entitled "A Star Is Born" is
stamped with the words, "Final Shooting Script," then opened to reveal the
following story: Esther Blodgett returns one winter evening to her
home, an isolated farmhouse in North Dakota, after seeing a movie with her
little brother Aleck, which starred her screen idol, Norman Maine.
Esther's Aunt Mattie disdains Esther's obsession with the movies, and her
father and grandmother Lettie are surprised to hear that Esther wants to be
a movie star. After Mattie berates her, Esther runs to her room in
tears. Lettie then tells Esther of her own past dreams of coming
across the country in a "prairie schooner," and although she cautions Esther
about the heartbreak that always comes to those who pursue their dreams,
Lettie encourages Esther and gives her money to take a train to Hollywood.
In Hollywood, Esther goes to Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, where she steps in the footprints of Norman Maine. Esther
naïvely expects to begin immediately as an extra, but she learns the
depressing news that no extra has been signed by Central Casting in the past
two years. When she is told that she has only a one in one hundred
thousand chance to succeed, she replies that maybe she is that "one."
Esther makes friends with Danny McGuire, an
out-of-work assistant director who lives in her rooming house and, when he
gets a job, they go to a performance at the Hollywood Bowl, where Norman
arrives drunk with actress Anita Regis and then starts a fight with a
persistent photographer.
Danny gets Esther a job as a waitress at a party
his director is giving. Norman arrives at the party following another
drunken escapade, which his exasperated press agent, Matt Libby, has kept
out of the newspapers. Anita catches Norman in the kitchen flirting
with Esther and, after she breaks a plate over his head, Norman and Esther
leave together. Although he invites her to his place to talk over her
career plans, Esther refuses; after he gives her a goodnight kiss, he asks
her to wait a moment so that he can take one last look at her before she
goes in. Norman then phones and awakens studio head Oliver Niles at
nearly three in the morning to arrange for a screen test for Esther, whose
sincerity and honesty he praises.
After the test, Esther signs a contract, and she
is soon transformed by posture and voice coaches, and makeup artists into
"Vicki Lester." Unable to find a suitable female lead for his next
picture, Norman talks Oliver into using Esther, and she is a smash hit with
the preview audience, who disparage Norman's performance. Norman and
Esther celebrate at the Cafe Trocadero overlooking the city, where Norman
tells Esther that she now can have anything in the world, but reveals that
stardom has not made him happy and that he feels he has thrown his life
away. Esther comforts him and tries to convinces him that it is not
too late, and they hug.
At a boxing match, Norman proposes marriage, and
the couple marry quietly at a small town courthouse, which spoils Libby's
plans to cash in on the publicity. Soon after their honeymoon trip in
a trailer, Norman's contract is cancelled, and he is relegated to the role
of house husband, while Esther becomes a top star. Norman starts
drinking again and, during the Academy Awards ceremonies, he drunkenly
interrupts Esther's acceptance speech for the award for finest performance
by an actress and accidentally slaps her in the face.
Sometime later, at Esther's instigation, Oliver
visits Norman, now in a sanitarium, to offer him a role in a picture, but
when Norman learns that it is not the lead, he good-naturedly declines.
During Christmas week, Norman, out of the
sanitarium and on the wagon, visits Santa Anita Racetrack, where he runs
into Libby. Although Norman tries not to get riled as Libby brutally
razzes him, when Libby crudely suggests that he is sponging off his wife,
Norman hits Libby, who belts him. Norman then orders a bottle of
scotch, and four days later Esther learns that he has been arrested for
crashing his car into a tree while intoxicated. Through Esther's
pleading with the judge, Norman is released to her custody, but the
newspapers make the incident into a front-page story.
At their beach house in Malibu, Norman overhears
Esther tell Oliver that she must now quit the movies so that she can go away
with Norman. After Oliver leaves, Norman finds Esther crying. He
tells her that he is going for a swim and, before he leaves her, he asks―as
he did the night they met―for one last look at her. He then walks into
the ocean and drowns.
Outside the church where Norman's funeral is
held, the uncaring comments and actions of Esther's fans cause her to scream
hysterically. She is about to leave town when Lettie arrives and
convinces her that tragedy is a test and that she must not run away from
herself. Later, as Esther is about to be interviewed on radio at a
premiere in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, she sees Norman's footprints
and starts to swoon, but she recovers and says with pride into the
microphone, "Hello, everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine." The last
page of the screenplay, which contains the above line, is shown, and the
screenplay is closed.
Notes
According to a HR news item, director William Wellman, in
collaboration with Robert Carson, formerly a New York magazine writer and
novelist, was developing a screenplay in early August 1936 entitled "It
Happened in Hollywood," which was based on a idea by producer David O.
Selznick. The projected film, to be made entirely in Technicolor, was
to star
Merle Oberon. Some modern sources state that Wellman came up with
the original idea, which he based on experiences of people he knew, and that
he tried to interest Selznick in the screenplay, which he was writing with
Carson. Selznick, the sources state, expressed little interest until
his wife Irene read it and encouraged him to produce it. This version
of the creation of the story is disputed in a memo from Selznick dated
January 7, 1937, after the initial shooting had ended, in which he wrote
that the film "is much more my story than Wellman's or Carson's. I
refused to take credit on it simply as a matter of policy...The actual
original idea, the story line, and the vast majority of the story ideas of
the scenes themselves are my own."
Selznick, in a modern source, stated that his
intention in making the film was "to disprove what I had long believed had
been a tradition until this time, that pictures about Hollywood could not
succeed" and that he would do this by presenting the story "of a rising star
in order to have the Cinderella element, with her path crossing that of a
falling star, to get the tragedy of the ex-star." After the film was
produced, the legal department at RKO, for whom Selznick had produced
What Price Hollywood? in 1932, recommended that a suit should be filed
to charge Selznick International with plagiarism of the earlier film.
No further information concerning the proposed suit has been located.
In a memo dated September 21, 1938, Selznick
stated that he originally spoke to George Cukor, the director of What
Price Hollywood?, about directing A Star Is Born, but that Cukor
declined. (In 1954, however, Cukor directed a remake of the film.)
Cukor has stated, in modern sources, that the scene in which "Oliver Niles"
visits "Norman Maine" in a sanitarium was inspired by a visit he himself
made to
John Barrymore in a Culver City, California sanitarium, during which he
offered Barrymore a role in
Camille.
Modern sources have suggested that the character of Norman Maine was based
on Barrymore,
John Gilbert, B.P. Schulberg, and John Bowers. According to a
Var obituary and a HR news item dated November 18, 1936, Bowers,
a prominent film star in the years 1923-26, who had been married to
Marguerite de la Motte at the height of his career, was found dead on a
Malibu beach on November 17, 1936. He had rented a small sailboat on
November 15 and had told a friend that he was going to commit suicide by
"sailing away into the sunset." Bowers' death occurred approximately
two weeks into the filming of A Star Is Born. Modern sources
state that the funeral scene in the film was inspired by occurrences at the
funeral in 1936 of MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, whose widow,
actress
Norma Shearer, was hounded by a mob outside the church.
According to HR news items, production
was halted on December 7, 1936 when Wellman developed a case of the flu.
He was replaced by Jack Conway until December 19. A modern source
states that when Wellman viewed the rushes of the funeral scene (which the
modern source states was directed by Victor Fleming), he decided to reshoot
it to have
Janet Gaynor scream at the scene's conclusion. This was the first
film of Margaret Tallichet and the first American film of British stage and
screen actress Elizabeth Jenns. Although an HR news item stated
that this was the first film of J.C. Nugent in five years, in reality, he
had appeared in two films in 1935, although those may have been his only
films since 1931. Marshall Neilan, who plays a small role in the Santa
Anita clubhouse scene, joined Selznick's writing staff in early December
1936, according to a HR news item. Sound recordist Oscar
Lagerstrom's name is misspelled in the onscreen credits. According to
a DV news item, the final scene in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre
in Hollywood was shot using crowds there for the preview of the United
Artists release Rembrandt. According to an HR news item,
initial filming was completed five days ahead of schedule.
Scenes in the film were shot at the following
places in and around Hollywood: Grauman's Chinese Theatre; the Club
Trocadero; the Hollywood Legion Stadium, where the boxing match was filmed;
the swimming pool at the Ambassador Hotel; the Santa Anita Racetrack; the
Hollywood Bowl; an estate in Beverly Hills; and the Biltmore Bowl, where the
Academy Awards ceremonies were held. A NYT article states that
the studio rented for two days the house of a prominent Los Angeles realtor
for the country house sequence, and that the rental was arranged through the
Film Location Bureau of the Assistance League.
According to information in the MPAA/PCA
Collection at the AMPAS Library, PCA director Joseph Breen, after reading an
incomplete script before production began, ordered a drinking scene cut, but
wrote to Selznick, "This is a great picture." Reviewers agreed and
praised the film highly, particularly for its treatment of the subject
matter. Frank S. Nugent, of NYT, called it "the most accurate
mirror ever held before the glittering, tinseled, trivial, generous, cruel,
and ecstatic world that is Hollywood," and Var stated that the film
was "unquestionably the most effective" film made about Hollywood.
According to a NYT article dated July 25, 1937, because of the
success of A Star Is Born, which had only been in release for three
months, fifteen films with Hollywood as their subject had either been
completed or were in production. Reviewers also lauded the
naturalistic use of color in the production. FD called it the
first film with a modern theme to be made in Technicolor. Nugent, in
NYT, stated that the film demonstrated that Technicolor "need not,
should not, be restricted to the gaudy costume drama," and HR
remarked, "the color is at all times kept subordinate. It enriches
without overwhelming." According to a NYT news item during the
production period, the scene during which a black-and-white film is
projected in the preview screening marked the first time that the technique
of projecting film on a transparency screen and then rephotographing it was
used.
According to modern sources, a number of writers
in addition to those credited worked on the film. Ring Lardner, Jr.,
in his autobiography, states that he and Budd Schulberg wrote a few scenes,
including the ending. At the time, according to Lardner, he was a
twenty-one-year-old assistant to Selznick's publicity director, Russell
Birdwell, and Schulberg was a reader in Selznick's story department.
Other sources state that John Lee Mahin wrote the final scene, among others.
While Matty Kemp is listed as having been cast in an HR news item, he
was not in the film. Modern sources state that this was the first film
for both
Lana Turner and
Carole Landis, who, they claim, appeared as extra in the Santa Anita
clubhouse scene. Modern sources also list the following additional
cast members: Dr. Leonard Walker (orchestra leader at Hollywood Bowl),
Bob Perry (referee), Willy Morris (Niles' secretary), Jane
Barnes (waitress), Edward Hearn (orderly), Vera Steadman and
Helene Chadwick, who was director William Wellman's first wife.
The film was named the No. 1 Money Making Film
of 1937 in a national exhibitors' poll. Wellman and Carson won the
Academy Award for Writing (Original Story), and W. Howard Greene was awarded
a Special Award for color photography, which was recommended by a committee
of leading cinematographers. In addition, the film was nominated for
Academy Awards in the following categories: Best Picture; Best Actor (Fredric
March); Best Actress (Janet
Gaynor); Best Director (William Wellman); and Best Assistant Director
(Eric Stacey).
According to a DV news item dated March
1, 1938, Selznick planned to produce a sequel under the title Heartbreak
Town, based on an original story by Budd Schulberg about the rise of a
child star in Hollywood. The screenplay was to be written by Schulberg
and Marshall Neilan, and the film was to star Tommy Kelly and Ann Gillis,
who had played together in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A
DV news item dated August 18, 1938 noted that Schulberg and Neilan were
working on a screen story entitled "Cavalcade on Hollywood," that
would deal with the history of Hollywood. No further information
concerning the proposed sequel has been located. A Star Is Born
was remade twice: a 1954 version produced by Warner Bros., directed by
George Cukor and starring
Judy Garland and
James Mason; and a 1976 version, released by Warner Bros., produced by
Jon Peters, directed by Frank Pierson, and starring Barbra Streisand and
Kris Kristofferson. Garland also appeared with
Walter Pidgeon on a Lux Radio Theater broadcast based on the film
on December 28, 1942. On March 12, 1987, a reconstructed print of the
1937 film, preserved by UCLA Film and Television Archives, had its premiere. |
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