A new star in the sky

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Movie
German title A new star in the sky
Original title A star is born
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1954
length 181 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director George Cukor
script Moss Hart
production Sidney Luft
music Harold Arlen
Background:
Ray Heindorf
camera Sam Leavitt
cut Folmar Blangsted
occupation

A new star in the sky (original title: A Star Is Born ) is a film by the American director George Cukor from 1954 . Judy Garland plays the up-and-coming singer Esther. Norman Maine, played by James Mason , gives her test shots out of gratitude. The young lady quickly becomes a celebrated star. The Musical is a remake of William A. Wellman's drama A Star Is Born from 1937 and was built by the film studios Transcona Enterprises and Warner Bros. produced. Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin were responsible for the background music .

action

At the charity event The Night of the Stars in Los Angeles to give Hollywood celebrities honored to raise money for the benefit of collecting former movie stars. Norman Maine is the attraction of the charity festival, but the actor keeps the audience waiting and a little later appears drunk behind the scenes. Maine can only be kept from stepping on stage with difficulty by the set shifters and shortly afterwards demolishes the changing rooms in the presence of photographers. Meanwhile, singer Esther Blodgett, who is currently visiting the city, prepares for her big performance with the Glenn Williams Orchestra. When she and her two partners interpret the song You Gotta Have Me Go with You , the heavily drunk Norman Maine takes the stage. Esther tries to get him off the stage. When she doesn't succeed, she spontaneously integrates the actor into the singing and dance number, thus preventing a scandal. Still intoxicated from alcohol, Maine thanks the singer after the gala, who is impressed by the screen star despite the negative experience. Hours later, the now sober Norman Maine visits Esther during rehearsals in a closed nightclub. The actor is fascinated by her melancholy love song The Man that Got Away and believes he recognizes that “certain something” in Esther that makes a great artist. He drives the confused young woman home and is able to persuade the singer, who dreams of a successful record recording in a large recording studio, to stay. The actor really wants to bring Esther to the film and immediately arranges an audition for her the next day.

A day later on the studio grounds, Norman and Esther get closer when the actor helps the insecure young woman choose the right make-up for the test shots. On the recommendation of Norman Maine, the singer gets a contract with the film studio, soon plays her first extra role and sees herself given a stage name, Vicky Lester . With the help of Maine, she is introduced to the film producer Oliver Niles shortly afterwards, who casts her as a replacement for the lead role in his new music film It's a New World (Born in a Trunk) . The film about a young singer trying to make a career is a success and Vicky Lester is hailed as the new star in Hollywood. Norman Maine's latest film, however, fails the audience and critics. After the success, Norman plans to leave Esther, but the young woman can convince him of her love and both marry secretly and undetected in the country, much to the annoyance of the agent Matt Libby, who had planned a large and media-effective wedding. Norman and Esther move into a luxurious house in the hills of Hollywood, but the first shadows soon fall over the young marriage. Esther's film career is flourishing; Norman's contract is meanwhile canceled by the film management in New York, as he poses too great a risk due to his past escapades and two unsuccessful films in a row. Norman succumbs to alcohol again and creates a scene at the Academy Awards. While Esther is being awarded the prize for best actress for her role in One World for Two , Norman, who has stayed away from the award ceremony, suddenly gets drunk, complains to Hollywood celebrities about his unemployment and accidentally hits his wife in the face. After the Oscars scandal, Norman tries to fight his alcoholic illness in a sanatorium. Esther, whose film career has not been damaged, mimes the happy singer and actress in front of the camera, but in fact she is slowly breaking down due to her husband's setbacks and blaming herself for his decline. Oliver Niles then visits Norman in the sanatorium and offers him a role in one of his upcoming films. But when Norman learns that it is only a supporting role, he refuses to accept the offer and pretends to have already been confirmed as the leading actor for an English production.

After Norman was released from the sanatorium, the couple moved to Malibu for loneliness . At Christmas, Norman meets the film agent Matt Libby at the racecourse, who has always been ill-disposed towards him. A fight breaks out and the ex-actor relapses. He stayed away from home for four days drunk, caused a traffic accident and was sentenced to six months in prison in the presence of Esther and Oliver Niles. However, the well-known film actress can convince the judge to be lenient and to hand over Norman to her care. While the gossip press sees the story of the ex-actor as something they have found, Esther decides in a conversation with film producer Oliver Niles to turn her back on Hollywood at the height of her career. From now on she only wants to take care of her beloved husband. Norman, who overheard the conversation, anticipates his wife's decision and chooses to commit suicide in the sea. The ex-movie star's funeral, organized by Matt Libby, triggers a mass rush, and Esther suffers a nervous breakdown in the tangle of fans and the flurry of flashlights. She escapes into solitude, but is torn from her lethargy by a friend and persuaded to appear at a charity event that the movie star should have attended long before. The ceremony, which is broadcast on all the world's stations, takes place in the theater where Esther and Norman first met. In memory of her late husband, the artist introduces herself as Mrs. Norman Maine and is celebrated by the audience.

History of origin

Original film and preproduction

A New Star in the Sky is a remake of William A. Wellman's 1937 drama A Star Rises , which in turn was based on George Cukor's What Price Hollywood? was inspired by 1932. The story of an ambitious actress who was discovered and promoted as a waitress at a Hollywood party by an alcoholic screen star was considered scandalous in 1937 in the film metropolis. Still, A Star Rises , with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the lead roles and produced by David O. Selznick and the United Artists , was nominated for seven Academy Awards a year later . The film won the trophy in the category Best Original Screenplay, and cinematographer W. Howard Greene won an honorary award for the Technicolor film.

Almost fifteen years later, the American film producer Sidney Luft tried to remake Wellman's drama. Luft had married actress Judy Garland in 1952 and has since tried to organize a successful comeback for his wife in film. Only 151 cm tall, Garland had made a career as a child singing star at MGM in the United States in the mid-1930s and was known to a wide audience through films such as Victor Fleming's The Magic Land (1939). Her tireless zeal for work and hectic private life took a toll on the actress - she suffered a nervous breakdown while filming the musical Duel in der Manege in 1949 and had to be replaced by Betty Hutton . In 1951, Garland was featured in Stanley Donen's comedy Royal Wedding alongside Fred Astaire , but did not appear in the middle of production for the set. This brought the MGM a loss of about five million DM ; they cast the part of Ellen Bowen with the actress Jane Powell and gave notice to Judy Garland. Success on Broadway was followed by a suicide attempt, but with the help of husband Sidney Luft, Garland managed to regain a foothold after a stay in a sanatorium with his own revue.

To restore her film career to fame with A New Star in the Sky , Sidney Luft founded the film production company Transcona Enterprises , in which he and Judy Garland had a 75 percent stake, film producer Edward L. Alpherson 20 percent and Ted Law , a friend of Luft's , to 5 percent. However, they did not manage to produce the film on their own, and the quartet turned to Jack L. Warner , president of the Warner Bros. film studio, who was friends with Judy Garland. It was agreed that Warner Bros. would fund the film and a budget of $ 1.5 million (other sources reported $ 2.5 million), a high but currently on the order of magnitude Sum for a musical. The director was entrusted to George Cukor , who had already written the material 22 years earlier under the title What Price Hollywood? and was responsible for successful comedies such as The Night Before the Wedding (1940) or The Is Not Of Yesterday (1950) in the past . Cukor was known for highlighting the roles of women in his films, which is why he had earned the title of "woman director" in Hollywood. For the male lead of the alcoholic screen star Norman Maine , among others, Humphrey Bogart , Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift were in discussion, which were rejected by Cukor. George Cukor's preferred candidate, Cary Grant , who had initially agreed for A New Star in the Sky , later turned away from the film project. As a replacement, the British James Mason could be hired, who had gained great fame in 1947 by the lead role in Carol Reed's crime film Outcast . The film script was written by the American playwright and screenwriter Moss Hart , who six years earlier had created the script for Elia Kazan's Oscar-winning film Taboo of the Just (1947). Hart received a $ 100,000 bonus and a house in Palm Springs, California, to work undisturbed . It was largely based on the 1937 script version by Dorothy Parker , Alan Campbell and Robert Carson , but did not have the original script, only a copy of the film.

Start of shooting

Filming began in September 1953 at the Warner Bros. film studios in Burbank , California. At the same time, Jean Negulesco's comedy How Do You Get A Millionaire? and Henry Koster's Bible film Das Gewand hit US cinemas. Both productions were shot in the new Cinemascope format, a widescreen process that enabled images with an aspect ratio of 1: 2.35. Because of this development, it was decided to shoot A New Star in the Sky in Cinemascope format. Warner Bros. initially relied on its own technology, the so-called WarnerSuperScope format.

The shooting was mainly overshadowed by technical problems, as well as the unreliability of leading actress Judy Garland, who still suffered from drug problems. Warner Bros. had never produced a film in Cinemascope format, and cinematographer Sam Leavitt had no experience with the new technology either. He was forced to do this during production. Lead actress Judy Garland was due to be available for costume and make-up tests on October 3, 1953, but was overweight and it was decided that she would not join the set until October 12. By then, Garland should have her weight problems under control. In fact, the actress did not appear for the screen tests on the second appointment, and it was only through film producer Jack Warner that Garland could be persuaded to fulfill her obligation. Filming began with her that same day, late at 11:25 am, with a scene in which Garland in the role of Esther Blodgett mimed a waving extra in a film studio. The 44-second scene was filmed for almost six hours until 5:20 p.m. and cost Warner Bros. $ 25,000 - and was to be re-shot six months later. This was followed by scenes in Esther's boarding house, her first meeting with film agent Matt Libby , Esther as a waitress in a Hamburg restaurant, as well as Esther and Norman Maine's encounter in the nightclub and the singing number The Man that Got Away . Then producer Jack Warner unexpectedly announced that the film should not be shot in WarnerScope format because the technology for outdoor shooting in the evening and at night was not fully developed. The film was then shot in the usual Cinemascope format under license agreements with the competing film studio Twentieth Century Fox . The WarnerColor format was also discarded in favor of the usual Technicolor process. This made a re-shoot of the already recorded film scenes inevitable.

At the end of November, the film team was nineteen days behind schedule and had only produced an hour of film for a million dollars. Judy Garland fell out in December, and scenes had to be brought forward in which she did not appear. The shooting was officially ended on February 26, 1954, but the two vocal numbers Born in a Trunk and Lose that Long Face were still missing . On March 2nd, the re-shoot of Lose that Long Face began , which was directed not by George Cukor but by Jack Donohue , an experienced choreographer of dance performances. Judy Garland, unaware of Donohue's intervention, collapsed in a fit of hysterics. She phoned Jack Warner and insisted on Cukor as the director. When Warner declined, Garland immediately left the set and stayed away from production for a few days. An attempt was made to stage the vocal numbers with Garland's double Gloria DeWerd, but the results were not convincing. While Judy Garland was recovering from her depression at home, unimportant scenes with James Mason were filmed to reassure Jack Warner, among other things, that production was progressing.

In March 1954, director George Cukor and film editor Folmar Blangsted completed the scenes that were already there in the editing room. On March 25, half of the film was shown to Sidney Luft, Judy Garland and Jack L. Warner, who believed that A New Star in the Sky would be a success. Production continued on April 13th, but not with the re-shooting of the vocal number Lose that Long Face , but with a scene in which Judy Garland as Esther served hamburgers in a restaurant. It wasn't until the following week that the song was directed by Richard Barstow . But it soon became clear that the film needed at least one more vocal number. Then, three of Roger Edens and Ira Gershwin actually discarded songs Born in a Trunk - Medley arranged, which extended the film to fifteen minutes. Director George Cukor didn't like the roster of the vocal line, but Sidney Luft and Jack Warner liked the medley. The recordings of this began on June 30, 1954 and always lasted until late at night. On the last day of shooting, July 28, 1954, the number Peanuts Vendor was filmed until 2:55 in the morning before the shooting came to an end and the crew and actors celebrated it with cake and champagne. The production time had been ten months and the costs had risen to over five million US dollars. The length of the film was 194 minutes, whereupon screenwriter Moss Hart instructed film producer Jack Warner to cut the film, but he was happy with the length. After a sneak preview of A New Star in the Sky on August 2, 1954, director George Cukor wrote to Moss Hart that he would have liked the film to have been a little shorter.

Remarks

  • In the scene after the film premiere actor met Jack Carson aka Matt Libby at the party a man on the remarkable soundtrack by him , it's a new world (Born in a Trunk) responds. That man is Ray Heindorf , film composer for A New Star in the Sky .
  • After completing the scene in which Norman Maine accidentally beats his wife at the Academy Awards, Judy Garland's face was badly affected.
  • The voice of Humphrey Bogart, originally considered for the part of Norman Maine , can be heard as that of a drunk who asks Judy Garland for "Melancholy Baby" in the café.
  • Further shooting for the film took place in the Shrine Auditorium on Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles and in Piru , California .

reception

A New Star in the Sky premiered at the RKO Pantages Theater in Los Angeles on September 29, 1954 . The film premiere was the event of the year in which the leading actors Judy Garland and James Mason attended as well as film producer Jack L. Warner and a number of prominent Hollywood mimes. George Cukor's 37th directorial work, also his first film shot entirely in color, received praise from the critics, who saw him as a satire on Hollywood, even if it was not as sharp as William A. Wellman's original. In addition to Cukor's production, in which the director was based among other things on John Huston's film Moulin Rouge (1952), the main focus was on the performance of the two main actors. Judy Garland's interpretation has been named the role of her life and rated one of the best of the current cinema year. Garland's show contribution to the song Somewhere There's a Someone , in which she combined song and dance with pantomime , was particularly memorable . Critical voices such as those of the industry journal Variety or the British playwright Noël Coward criticized the length of the film. Variety headlined that the extraordinarily long film would mean real death for the takeover in theaters. The problem was also that it was difficult to organize two evening performances of A New Star in the Sky . As a rule, screenings began at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., but the length of the film made it necessary to start the first screening too early at 6:30 p.m. and the second too late at 10:00 p.m. to let. When the same complaints from movie theater owners reached Harry Warner , co-founder of Warner Bros., he was forced to instruct his brother Jack to cut A New Star in the Sky significantly. This procedure had not been agreed with director George Cukor, who was meanwhile in India to direct the film Junction Bhowani (1956) with Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger . Editor Folmar Blangsted telegraphed to India but was unable to establish contact with Cukor. For example, Blangsted independently transformed the 181-minute film into a theatrical version that was over 60 minutes shorter and was not authorized by the director. The anger of Sidney Luft, who had driven the film project, was directed against Jack L. Warner and director George Cukor. Cukor himself was not to exchange a word with Folmar Blangsted in his life and spoke of someone having mercilessly "slaughtered" his work. Important parts of the film had fallen victim to the scissors, including the vocal number "Lose that Long Face". All copies were trimmed to the shorter version, which earned Warner Bros. the ire of critics and cinema owners. Many movie theaters wanted to personally decide which version to present to their audience. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther , who had praised the 181-minute version in his October 12, 1954 film review , immediately removed A New Star in the Sky from his list of the best films of the year.

Jack L. Warner's hope that the film would be a box office success was not fulfilled. In November 1954, movie ticket sales for A New Star in the Sky declined. A month later, in December, everyone realized that the musical was not going to make a profit. With an estimated production cost of $ 5.019 million (other sources say it was over $ 6 million), the film grossed just $ 4.35 million in the United States alone. It raised $ 1.56 million outside the United States. In Germany, the film opened in cinemas on December 21, 1954. Despite the major problems in production and financial failure, Jack Warner was proud of the film, as he revealed in his autobiography . Leading actress Judy Garland was just as proud of the film, but her hopes for a comeback in the film were not fulfilled after A New Star in the Sky . It was only after seven years of abstinence from the screen that Garland was able to successfully report back with the supporting role of Irene Hoffman Wallner in Stanley Kramer's drama The Judgment of Nuremberg (1961) and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. However, she would only appear in two more films, John Cassavetes ' A Child Waiting and Ronald Neame's Boards That Mean the World (both 1963), before she died in 1969 of accidentally overdosing on sleeping pills.

In 1982, film-loving museum director Ronald Haver set out to spend his entire vacation in the Warner Bros. archives to track down 27 minutes of lost footage of A New Star in the Sky , which had been cut from the film shortly after the premiere were. Haver managed to locate the missing tapes of the original score, but only twenty minutes of the footage. A 176-minute version was thus restored. The missing scenes were replaced with a series of contemporary photographs of production, dialogue or music. Director George Cukor was able to see the restored version of his film again. Cukor, who with a new star in the sky had celebrated its entry into the musical specialist and eleven years later for the musical My Fair Lady won (1964) with the directing Oscar, died on January 24, 1983, one day before the re-release of the film .

Reviews

  • “... nobody can deny that this film is artistically a brilliant achievement in every respect. How James Mason nobly individualizes the schema role of the drunkard actor, how the director knows how to turn every scene, no matter how banal, into something, how the revue and dance are melted into the plot, all of this has to be done like it or not, admire it. The leading actress Judy Garland is a phenomenon. So you have lots of sparkling treasures together - the only thing missing is what they should crown. "(Film-dienst)
  • “Part of the movie is Hollywood satire - amusing the way the inconspicuous Esther Blodgett transforms into the glamorous Vicky Lester in the studio; biting where Esther and Norman fall into the clutches of the publicity machinery. And it is a wonderful mixture of music, witty wit and romantic tragedy, compelling and convincing. "(1001 films - The best films of all time)
  • “Nobody beats Mr. Cukor in the way he handles this type of film, and it has performances from Miss Garland and Mr. Mason that make the heart flutter and bleed. Episodes such as their meeting that night at a fundraising event, their conversation about getting married on a soundstage under a listening microphone, their poignant existence for each other in a million dollar beach bungalow, their tormenting ordeal in a nocturnal court, are wonderful and real acted. " (New York Times)

Awards

Judy Garland was the favorite for the trophy in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards in 1955 (1954 official count). The American actress had previously been awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. The film was nominated in six categories at the ceremony on March 30, 1955, both at the RKO Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, hosted by Bob Hope , and at the NBC Century Theater in New York City, hosted by Thelma Ritter , but could not prevail against the competition. Garland surprisingly fell behind Grace Kelly , who was honored for George Seaton's drama A Country Girl . The American comedian Groucho Marx was then prompted to send a telegram to the defeated actress, in which he compared her defeat with the famous robbery on the Brinks Building in Boston in 1950 (original tone: "the biggest robbery since Brinks." ). Leading actor James Mason, who had also been awarded the Golden Globe in the comedy and musical category, had to admit defeat by Marlon Brando ( Fist in the Neck ) . Also unprämiert remained Ray Hein village film music and Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin's film song The Man That Got Away .

In 2000, A New Star in the Sky was included in the National Film Registry , a directory of American films that are considered particularly worth preserving.

The American Film Institute voted the film 7th of the 25 most important American musical films. In the list of AFI's 100 Years… 100 Songs published by the American Film Institute in 2004 as one of the 100 most significant songs in American film, the song The Man that Got Away was voted number 11.

Oscar 1955 :

British Film Academy Awards 1956 :

  • nominated in the category Best Foreign Actress (Judy Garland)

Golden Globe Awards 1955 :

  • Best Actor - Comedy / Musical (James Mason)
  • Best Actress - Comedy / Musical (Judy Garland)

Further awards and nominations :

Remake

In 1976, the story was remade for the cinema in the United States by the American director and screenwriter Frank Pierson under the title A Star Is Born . The 139 minute long new version, with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in the lead roles, has been relocated to the rock and pop world. Streisand plays the young Esther Hoffman , while Kristofferson plays the rock star John Norman Howard , for whom the decline begins. Director Pierson and the scriptwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion based their script on the 1937 version by William A. Wellman, but could not build on the critical success of the previous films with the film. He was rated as a terrible stirring piece (see Heyne Filmlexikon). Nevertheless, the film song "Evergreen", interpreted jointly by Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams, was awarded an Oscar.

In 2018, A Star Is Born was another remake with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in the cinemas.

literature

  • Hart, Moss; Parker, Dorothy; Campbell, Alan: A Star is Born . Hollywood: Script City, 1954.
  • Crowther, Bosley: The Screen: 'A Star Is Born' Bows. Judy Garland, James Mason in Top Roles . In: The New York Times , October 12, 1954 issue.
  • B., W .: A Star is born . In: film-dienst (1955), No. 1
  • Schneider, Steven Jay (Ed.): 1001 films: the best films of all time . Hombrechtikon / Zurich: Ed. Olms, 2005. ISBN 3-283-00525-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. International Biographical Archive 33/1969 of August 4, 1969.
  2. ↑ AFI's 100 Years… 100 songs. (PDF; 134 kB) In: afi.com. American Film Institute (AFI), June 22, 2005, accessed August 28, 2015 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 19, 2006 .