About 15 or 20 minutes into ‘A Star is Born’, I became thoroughly confused as to what was happening in the storyline. Fading, alcoholic screen star, Norman Maine (James Mason), has just persuaded Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) to quit her job as a singer in a band with the promise that he’ll get her a screen test the next day at his movie studio. Maine persuades Esther to take the ‘chance of a lifetime’ and she vows she’ll never work again as a waitress, a job she was slaving away at prior to procuring her current job as a low-rent band singer. The next thing I see are a series of production stills with the film’s soundtrack underneath. There are brief glimpses of moving pictures including Esther working as a car hop. I was thinking, ‘what gives?’–she stated emphatically she wouldn’t be going back to working in such a menial job and here she is, serving all varieties of hamburgers at a fast food joint. And what happened to the screen test that Maine promised to get her the next day?

I was warned by the hosts at TCM (including Alec Baldwin) who introduced the film on TV. They said there was some footage missing but the soundtrack was intact. I didn’t know exactly what they meant until I actually saw the ‘restoration’. My reaction was, ‘Oh my God, I have never seen anything as pathetic as this in the movies’. I had to consult Wikipedia to find out what transpired during the missing footage. Well it seems that Maine was called away early to film on location and forgot to write down Esther’s address. When she didn’t hear from him, she assumed that he was merely flirting with her and that’s when she’s forced to take the job as a car hop. Only later, Maine locates Esther and makes good on his promise to help her. Wikipedia also explains that Warner executives chopped the film to pieces after Director George Cukor left to scout locations for a new film. Somehow, the executives didn’t realize that by cutting crucial scenes, the film’s continuity would be seriously compromised. You would think that despite the fact that that they now had a new version of the film, the cut scenes would somehow be placed in the studio’s archives, where they would at least be preserved for posterity. But no, the missing scenes are no longer extant, and I wonder exactly what became of them? Who made the decision to throw them in the garbage can? Even Wikipedia doesn’t have the answers.

Despite the missing footage, one can still realize that ‘A Star is Born’ is a vastly overrated film. Take for starters, the character of Norman Maine. We’re told that he’s a movie star of great import and even after his death, Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) the studio head, states emphatically to the studio’s publicist, Matt Libby (Jack Carson) that Maine was “a great guy”. Why exactly is he “a great guy?” In reality, there is nothing at all appealing about the character. He’s basically a self-centered drunk who attempts to undermine his wife’s career out of jealousy. When he drunkenly crashes Esther’s acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, that underscores what an unlikeable character he is. When he’s at the sanitarium and Niles offers him a part to try and rehabilitate his career, Maine is in complete denial, and tells his boss that he has other offers pending at major studios. The coup de grace is when he selfishly commits suicide after he overhears Niles informing his wife that he’s all washed up.

And what about the sorry plot of ‘A Star is Born’. It’s so completely predictable because we know where it’s going–Maine intends to do himself in. The only question is how. There’s virtually no conflict throughout the film. Early on, Esther easily chooses to go for the screen test over staying with the band (she’s already made up her mind after she falls for Maine’s charms). Despite the fact that everyone knows Maine is a boorish alcoholic, for some reason he still has enough clout to walk into his boss’s office and gets him to listen how good a singer Esther is. It doesn’t take much to convince Niles to place Esther, the unknown contract player, in a major motion picture, which leads to her becoming a star overnight. Once Esther becomes a star, there are no longer any surprises. When not singing in overlong and overblown production numbers, she becomes preoccupied with her sad sack husband whose decline is illustrated in a series of repetitious scenes. I continue to maintain that ‘sad sacks’ who don’t like themselves, do not make for good drama!

Finally, there’s Judy Garland, who mugs her way through the atrocious plot. The tacky storyline is simply a vehicle for Garland to throw in the kitchen sink as far as presenting one dubious song after another. The producers were so hard up that they had to dig out Al Jolson’s old chestnut, ‘Swanee’, which proved to be Garland’s best number, but a tune which seemed completely out of place in this movie. And what of the majority of the songs here? Well, the truth is that most of them do not stand the test of time–they are instantly forgettable and no one remembers them today.

The question remains, was Garland as great as so many say she is? Certainly not in this movie! Yes, she had that big, booming voice and certainly her “Somewhere over the Rainbow” is a true classic. But just look at her singing and acting here in what is supposed to be her great comeback vehicle–I know many will not agree, but to me, simply put, it’s corny and dated.

‘Star’ has some great cinematography but a storyline that features an unappealing protagonist in decline coupled with the performance of a real life star, also headed downhill.
Rating: 2 / 5