IN TRIBUTE TO THE LATE RONALD HAVER
The man most responsible for rescuing and preserving the most complete version of A Star Is Born possible.

The following is his article "A STAR IS BORN AGAIN" as published in American Film Magazine's July-August 1983 issue.         Ron Haver

This is a preview of his incredible book - "A Star Is Born - The Making of the 1954 Film and its 1983 Restoration" - still in print and available from Amazon.com.

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The search for the missing half hour from George Cukor’s classic had all the ingredients of a detective story.
Ronald Haver

On July 7 in New York, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in association with Warner Bros., is presenting a most unusual event: the premiere of a restored version of the 1954 classic A Star Is Born, with Judy Garland and James Mason. Following the opening, the new-old film will travel to Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Dallas in a series of single-evening screenings. The recovery of this lost classic is a saga in itself, one marked not only by the passion and diligence of the researchers, but by the spirit of cooperation among the various institutions – studios, archives, trade associations, and agencies, involved in the restoration. This is a personal account of the effort to restore A Star Is Born to the original three-hour film that its director loved so much he could never bear to see the cut version. – Eds.

George Cukor’s 1954 version of A Star Is Born is legendary for the way it was edited against its director’s wishes. About a half hour was taken out of the film, and over the years, among Cukor aficionados, the search for the missing material took on aspects of the quest for the Holy Grail.

I know, because I’m one of them. I was fifteen when I first saw A Star Is Born. The ads proclaimed it “the most eagerly awaited motion picture of our time.” It was Jack Warner’s all-or-nothing gamble on the comeback of Judy Garland. She hadn’t made a movie in four years. After a decade and a half on the MGM roster, she had been fired for “unreliability,” had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide, and divorced her director-husband Vincente Minnelli. Her third husband, a promoter named Sid Luft, masterminded her triumphant return to show business.

In early 1953 she and Luft made a deal with Warner Bros.; the company agreed to finance a remake of David O. Selznick’s A Star Is Born (1937). Luft would produce, George Cukor would direct from a new script by Moss Hart, and Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin would compose the songs. With James Mason as the alcoholic movie superstar Norman Main, who transforms band singer Esther Blodgett (Garland) into star Vicki Lester, filming got under way; the budget was $2 million. Technical delays – caused by the new CinemaScope process – Garland’s emotional ups and downs, and Cukor’s perfectionism stretched the shooting schedule from three months to nearly seven, and the budget ballooned to an astronomical (for 1954) $5 million.

The picture was given the largest, gaudiest, most spectacular opening Hollywood had seen in years. On September 29, 1954, dozens of spotlights formed a huge star over the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, and more than twenty thousand fans jammed the area around Hollywood and Vine. For the first time, television cameras covered a Hollywood opening live from coast to coast.

Life called it “a brilliantly staged, scored, and photographed film, worth all the effort” and the New York Times said it was “stunning.” Several weeks later, though, Variety carried a short item noting that Warners would trim A Star Is Born from three hours to two and a half. Although business had been good, theater owners had complained that the long running time would keep the number of showings down to three per day instead of four or five, thus cutting into revenue.

In the film Norman Maine tries to explain to Esther Blodgett what greatness is: “There are certain pleasures you get – little jabs of pleasure when a swordfish takes the hook…or watching a great dancer – you don’t have to know about ballet. That little bell rings inside – that little jolt of pleasure. That’s what happened to me just now.” So it was with me and A Star Is Born one hot Sunday afternoon. I was disappointed at seeing the shortened version because I wanted more of those “little jabs of pleasure.” I wanted more of the art direction – so carefully and tastefully understated – and of the subtle richness of the photography that filled the huge CinemaScope screen with compositions I’d never seen in a film. I wanted to see and hear the two missing musical numbers. I wanted more of the Moss Hard and Cukor’s observations of the Hollywood social scene, the studio atmosphere, and the ambience of Los Angeles and its environs, more of the elegance and wry sense of humor that permeated the film. But Warners had withdrawn the three-hour version, and it never reappeared.

In 1971, when I was a projectionist in Los Angeles at The American Film Institute, I had the chance to see all of George Cukor’s films. Cukor and Gavin Lambert were screening them during research on Lambert’s book On Cukor. I was completely in awe of Cukor, who was as witty, as elegant, and as forthright as his work. I asked him if we could screen his personal print of A Star Is Born. “I don’t have a copy,” he said. “I don’t have any of my films. All I have are scripts and stills.” I implored the AFI’s film librarian to try to get the 181-minute version from Warners. Back came the word: All the studio had was a stereo print that ran 154 minutes. The day of the screening, Lambert showed up alone. “Where’s Mr. Cukor?” I asked. “He’s not coming,” he said. How strange, I thought, not to want to see one of your best films. His reason was later given in a remark recorded in Lambert’s book” “Judy Garland and I felt like the English queen who had ‘Calais’ engraved on her heart…neither of us could ever bear to see that final version.”

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