A Star Is Born is a 1937 romantic drama film Technicolor produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as an aging movie star who helps launch her career. Other members of the cast include Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander and Carole Landis.

Plot summary

The film follows a few years in the lives of Esther Blodgett (Gaynor), a promising young Hollywood starlet known to her fans as "Vicki Lester", and Norman Maine (March), the older, alcoholic actor who started Esther's career as his own career was fading. Vicki Lester rises to international fame and popularity while Maine sinks into obscurity and suicide.

The story begins in rural North Dakota, where Esther is a teenage girl determined to become a Hollywood actress. Although her aunt sternly discourages such thoughts, Esther's grandmother encourages her to pursue her dream and gives her money to finance her efforts. Esther goes to Hollywood and begins seeking small parts as an actress.

At first, Esther is unable to find any acting work at all. Many other young women are applying for the same parts, and Esther is told that her chances of success are one in 100,000. However, one of her neighbors is an assistant director who helps her land a one-time waitressing job at a party for Hollywood film professionals. While working at the party, Esther catches the eye of Norman Maine, a famous actor whom she admires, and they begin a romance. Esther wins an acting contract after Maine persuades his producer Oliver Niles (Menjou) to give her a screen test, and she is given the screen name "Vicki Lester". When the studio has trouble finding a female lead for Maine's current film, entitled The Enchanted Hour, Niles follows Maine's advice to give the role to Esther. This film makes Vicki Lester an overnight success, even as viewers continue to lose interest in Maine.

The release of The Enchanted Hour is soon followed by Esther and Norman's elopement and a comical trailer-camping honeymoon in the mountains. When they return to filmmaking, Vicki Lester continues to flourish as Norman repeatedly encounters signs that his own career is over. After a stay at a sanitarium fails to cure Norman's increasingly disruptive alcoholism, Esther decides to quit acting in order to be with him. However, Norman overhears her discussing this plan and drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean. Soon afterward, Esther's grandmother comes to visit Esther and convinces her to continue her career. The film ends with Esther and her grandmother making speeches during Vicki Lester's foot- and handprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, announcing herself as Mrs. Norman Maine.

Cast

*Janet Gaynor as Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester

*Fredric March as Norman Maine

*Adolphe Menjou as Oliver Niles

*May Robson as Grandmother Lettie

*Andy Devine as Daniel 'Danny' McGuire

*Lionel Stander as Matt Libby

*Owen Moore as Casey Burke

*Peggy Wood as Miss Phillips

Production

A Star Is Born was filmed from October to December 1936 with an estimated budget of $1,173,639, and premiered in Los Angeles, California on April 27, 1937 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. In New York, the film premiered at Radio City Music Hall. The scene in the film where Menjou offers the fading star a supporting role was added at the suggestion of George Cukor, who directed the 1954 remake.

Early in their careers, Budd Schulberg (then a script reader for David O. Selznick) and Ring Lardner, Jr. (who was working in Selnick's publicity department) were assigned to write some additional dialogue for the film, a collaboration which produced Janet Gaynor's (and the film's) final words, "This is Mrs. Norman Maine." The line was used again in the 1954 Warner Bros. musical remake starring Judy Garland. Ring Lardner, Jr. Interview

Background

Some cinematic theorists believe that the marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay was the film's real-life inspiration. John Bowers has also been identified as inspiration for the Norman Maine character and the dramatic suicide-by-drowning scene near the end of the film (Bowers drowned in November 1936). The film contains several inside jokes, including Gaynor's brief imitations of Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Mae West; the "Crawford Smear", referring to Joan Crawford's lipstick; and the revelation that the glamorous Norman Maine's real last name is Hinkle. (Hinkle was the real last name of silent film star Agnes Ayres, and not far removed from Fredric March's real last name, Bickel.) The film also has some similarities to the earlier film What Price Hollywood?, whose creators actually considered suing, but never did.

A common Hollywood myth about the film is that Lana Turner appeared as an extra in one of the scenes in the film. Turner often denied the myth over the years, mentioning that she was discovered several months after the picture had finished production.

Academy Awards

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning the award for Best Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (March), Best Actress (Gaynor), Best Assistant Director, and Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay. It won a special Academy Award for its Technicolor cinematography for W. Howard Greene.

Adaptations to other media

A Star is Born was adapted as a radio play on the September 13, 1937 episode of Lux Radio Theater with Robert Montgomery and Janet Gaynor, the November 17, 1940 episode of The Screen Guild Theater starring Loretta Young and Burgess Meredith, the December 28, 1942 episode of Lux Radio Theater with Judy Garland and Walter Pidgeon, the June 29, 1946 episode of Academy Award Theater, starring Fredric March, the May 23, 1958 episode of the Ford Theatre and the June 16, 1950 episode of Screen Director's Playhouse starring Fredric March.

Remakes

A Star Is Born has been remade twice, in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, and in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

See also

* List of films in the public domain

References