It's Thursday, March 2, 2023, and we're continuing this week's theme of paying homage to Women's History Month by shining a light on the historic role women's voices have always played in advancing America's civic and political discourse. And who has a better voice than Lady Gaga? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Yesterday, in my essay about Dorothy Parker, a true American original, I briefly touched on her time in Hollywood. This chapter of her life is little remembered today, mainly because Dorothy Parker is so indelibly identified with New York City. It's also partly because her career as a screenwriter was short-circuited by the "Red Scare" and the hunt for Communists, real and imagined, in the film industry. I'm not getting into all that this morning, however.
What I will explore is a story Parker helped craft that enthralled moviegoers for more than eight decades. First produced in 1937, big screen remakes arrived in 1954, 1976, and 2018 (and a television version in 1951). Although details were tinkered with, the storyline remained the same. So did the title: "A Star Is Born."
The first "A Star Is Born," in 1937, was hailed for its originality -- but not because of the story involving a Hollywood ingénue falling in love with a fading (and alcoholic) older male star. Actually, the story was so derivative of the 1932 movie "What Price Hollywood?" that George Cukor, who'd directed the 1932 film, rebuffed David O. Selznick's request to direct "A Star Is Born." RKO execs briefly considered a plagiarism lawsuit, which seems quaint today, particularly when one considers what happened with "A Star Is Born."
No, the innovative aspect of the 1937 picture was "Technicolor," so much so that cinematographer William Howard Greene was given a special Oscar at the 1938 Academy Award ceremony. Ironically, scriptwriter Robert Carson and director William A. Wellman won the Oscar that year for Best Original Story.
What the Academy seems to have been conveying was its delight (and this remains true today) that movies about Hollywood could be commercially successful. Other Oscar nominations for "A Star Is Born" included Selznick (Best Producer); Wellman (Best Director); Fredric March (Best Actor); Janet Gaynor (Best Actress); and screenplay writers Carson, Alan Campbell, and Dorothy Parker. No big loss for Gaynor or March: She had won Best Actress at the first ceremony in 1929 and he'd won Best Actor in 1932 and would win again in 1947.
In hindsight, though, it's a shame that the best adaptation didn't go to the trio of screenwriters because it would have been nice for fans of Dorothy Parker to know that she won an Oscar. I mean, Al Gore won one. So did Bruce Springsteen.
But I'm digressing. Wouldn't it have been a treat to be in that writing room? And it wasn't just Carson, Campbell, and Parker. Intent on having a story worthy of his expensive "Technicolor" innovation, Selznick assigned Ring Lardner Jr. and Budd Schulberg to help the trio punch up the dialogue. Out of that collaboration of wordsmiths came the film's tear-jerking final line, delivered by Gaynor, "This is Mrs. Norman Maine."
The writing helped make this story so lasting. It's why George Cukor agreed to direct the 1954 version with Judy Garland and James Mason, a film classic. That version begins the morphing of the story: Judy Garland is a singer, not an actress, and Mason plays a fading director, not a movie star. By 1976, when Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson play the leads it's all about music -- just as it is in 2018 when Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are paired.
One wrinkle in the 2018 remake is that Bradley Cooper, who also directs the film, is a real-life movie star who had to learn to play the guitar and sing. He does it quite well, though he is eclipsed onstage and in real life by the amazing Stefani Germanotta, whose voice is a gift from heaven, whether it's Ally Maine or Lady Gaga singing "I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in, I'll never meet the ground …"
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
