When I heard that yet another remake of A Star Is Born was going to be released in theaters, I resolved to watch all of the movies in one sitting at home and not pay to see it in theaters. Engaging in A Star Is Born marathon is not necessarily an easy feat. It is hard to accumulate all the movies—I had to get the first three from the library. Each movie is long, and I decided to watch them in chronological order, which means that A Star Is Born (1937) is the first of four movies that I watched, and the shortest of the four. Side note: some argue that the original movie was What Price Hollywood, which I have not seen and has a similar storyline, but this was indisputably the first movie with this title.
A Star Is Born (1937) is about a young Midwestern woman ridiculed by her family for loving movies, but with her grandmother’s encouragement, she leaves for Hollywood. She is unfamiliar with the concept of a day job and discovers that it is harder to make it big than she thought. Because of her affable personality, she manages to gain favor, lodging and a shot to make an impression, which she does on a famous bad boy actor, who gets her a big break. Her performance receives more favorable reviews than he does, and he discovers that his shenanigans have hurt his reputation and career. He tries to be a good sport about it, but eventually flames out. She considers going home and retiring in grief, but her grandma, who likens her to the pioneers who tamed the West, basically says, “Um, no” and apparently secretly could not wait to get to Hollywood herself.
A Star Is Born (1937) is essentially two movies in one. The first half and end is all about the ingénue played by Janet Gaynor, whose work I am unfamiliar with, and the meat of the story is about the has been star, played by Fredric March. The momentum of the story is how the sausage gets made—throw out the expired goods and put the freshest product on the shelf. Gaynor is supposed to be a breath of fresh air in comparison to the elegant, sophisticated ladies of Hollywood. I think that she is supposed to be funny and down to earth, but with the first two incarnations, it is tell, not show the talent of the has been star, in the original, it is the same treatment for the ingénue, and I never bought that she was talented, especially since if we’re really being honest, she doesn’t attract the bad boy actor with her talent, but her looks. She basically starts off as the other woman-scandalous! This version is more committed to the traditional woman gender roles so she wants to make it big, but isn’t ambitious or career focused. Her role as wife appears to be the most important to her.
March’s bad boy actor is actually quite charming and does not seem all that bad. He may be the most likeable version until Bradley Cooper’s smoldering take on the character. His version of the humiliation scene is perfect-a great mixture of extreme selfishness, anger and then horror and shame at the realization of the unintended physical and emotional impact of his thoughtless act. Unlike Mason’s liberation, his act seems more like a rebuke to the real world. Guys should not feel the consequences of bad behavior, i.e. cancel culture. Gary Oldman and Mel Gibson called to say there was no such thing. The real bad guy is the press and the public, not the has been actor who is not depicted as the one primarily responsible for his demise.
Adolphe Menjou as the good guy producer and Lionel Stander as Libby, the conniving publicist, have no subsequent equal to their memorable performances. They are consummate scene-stealers and upstage the stars at every opportunity. They fill the space left by the stars and establish a rhythm to the movie when it threatens to drag. They are all business and fun though they occupy opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their relationship with the bad boy star.
A Star Is Born (1937) is actually kind of shocking. It unquestioningly puts career above love, equating success in the film industry with taming the West as if actors are pioneers of culture and the imagination. (Of course, there is no discussion of how Native Americans fit into this narrative, but I guess it is implied based on most Western narratives). Heartache and death are acceptable and expected drawbacks to a successful career. He was always going to die. It is an opera, but instead of the woman dying, it is the man. If you pay attention to the opening scene, you’ll realize that it was predestined. Men are not dependable for women in most classic Hollywood movies.
Because I am a completist, I also watched the reels that would play before it started: a cartoon called Gramy House Cleaning Blues; The News Parade of the Year and the first episode of a film serial called Radio Patrol that made no sense whatsoever. Because of the newsreel, it was alarming to see how things were actually worse when the film premiered. A former KKK man received an appointment as justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Tojo Hidei, Prime Minister of Japan. We may have Nazis and KKK now, but at least they’re less effective, and Putin is no Stalin even if he wishes that he was. The special features that accompany subsequent incarnations are solely devoted to the movie with no glimpse of the outside world.
If you love old movies, I would highly recommend A Star Is Born (1937), but if you are not, and you are not a completist, this movie probably will bore you because Gaynor’s talent does not translate for postmodern viewers, even for film lovers such as myself that gets her impressions and jokes. She is just the weakest of the bunch, and the overall story lacks a certain rigor in terms of momentum and direction.