A STAR IS BORN

 To what extent does it debunk the Hollywood myth?

The Hollywood myth: people working their way up to the top, dream factory, achieve goals stardom
through work…
 Opening sequence // Singin’ in the rain one in org structure and elements -controlled fun
hysteria
Huge spotlight skytracer breaks + then are directed twds ourselves
Camera pans down: a sign in frame reads “Drug” pq coupé
Cars but road jammed, over crowded…
Fans et noise (jungled mixture)
Erratic shots, no info no focus
On location -realistic more truthful vision goal
 Havoc, confusion and overwhelming, aggressive, suffocate!
= Hollywood invades privacy
Alienate viewer: seems senseless frenzy meaningless -more stressful, no dreamlike sensation!
= void of evthg in this world
 Satyre -harsh on Hollywood rotten dream factory
1st song: in the theatre; same symbolical use of the spotlight: one focusing set relief on performers, rest
of stage and wings in darkness. But sequence plays on it: apparition of Norman drunk, beginning of
his downfall => plot hinges upon tension: is he going to go onstge and enter spotlight. Discovered by
light, eventually Esther integrates him in the number
+ in oblique way, lights blinding face camera -the view from backstage

 Lack of dissociation between the public and the private, invasion of Hollywood into their lives
and turning them into a nightmare
Idea of how Hollywood encroaches upon privacy
Star always leads to some form of potential tragedy, no smooth path from rags to riches

+Dehumanizing process, inhumanity of this industry

Dream factory constructed and destroyed
Norman breaking things? Or is a broken thing
Alcohol is actually ‘in pain’
Unemployment, how to earn a living
Esther rising to fame
// Nomran to death, physical self-destruction, drowns eventually, loses himself (names: becomes Mr
lester etc) and self-sacrifice in end
Hollywood myth and American dream
Successful Esther -she embodies the myth?! Chorus, becomes star thanks to opportunity be recognisd
But artificial world: fake name, blind to her talent, prefer visual appearance (cf Makeup scene
stereotypical vision of glamour onto perf witout consideration for their specificity)
CF Somewhere there’s a someone

Biography: Judy’s life, addicted to pills bcse of studios, etc. Violence inhuman world
The film opens during the first of the three Hollywood ceremonies, a gala benefit "Night of Stars," being held at
Hollywood's Shrine Theatre. The concert's proceeds will go to "The Motion Picture Relief Fund," a way to help
out-of-work actors, as the Master of Ceremonies boasts: "Hollywood never forgets its own." Brilliant, but fading
alcoholic movie actor Norman Maine (James Mason) arrives late to the benefit, obviously drunk. He staggers
and wanders onto the stage in the middle of one of the acts. When one of the dancing performers, Esther
Blodgett (Judy Garland) first notices him, seeing how drunk he is, she quips:

Mister Maine is feeling no pain.

Norman becomes belligerent backstage, particularly toward his pushy, mean-spirited studio publicist Matt Libby
(Jack Carson), insulting him:

I don't need any more pictures, I don't need any more interviews, because the public loves me.

When Esther is performing in a song and dance act during a performance by the Glenn Williams Orchestra,
Norman lurches onstage, making a drunken spectacle of himself in front of the audience. Still dancing and
singing, cleverly incorporating him into her routine, she saves him from major embarrassment and leads him off
the stage as the audience applauds.

After the performance, Maine realizes the extraordinary gesture she has made and thanks her. Learning her
name, he comments:

You must have been born with that name. You couldn't have made it up.

Still inebriated, on one of the backstage walls, he draws a heart with an arrow through it and their initials, using
her lipstick. Norman asks Esther to dinner, but her pianist, Danny McGuire (Tommy Noonan) rescues her.
Maine threatens meanness:

I know myself extremely well. I'm just near the fighting stage at the moment, and if I don't get my way, I begin
to break up people and things.

To mollify him, she promises to see him sometime later, and as she leaves, she reveals a true liking for him:

You know, drunk or not, he's nice.

A sullen Libby takes Norman safely home to sleep off his drunkenness. In the middle of the night, haunted by
the memory of Esther, he awakens and determines to track her down. He first goes to the Cocoanut Grove,
thinking she might be there. A well-known, frequent womanizer, Norman discusses and rates potential pickups
and conquests with the maitre-d: "Too young. I had a very young week last week. It's not worth it." It is
suggested that he might locate Esther at an empty, after-hours Sunset Strip musicians' hangout.

When he enters the club, he is transfixed as he watches her sing the torch song blues/ballad classic, "The Man
That Got Away," a memorable performance to a room filled with stacked chairs.

Esther is surprised to see him there, and sober too! He compliments her, finding a tremendous 'jolt of pleasure' in
her unique singing style:

There are certain pleasures you get, little - little jabs of pleasure when, when a swordfish takes the hook or - or -
or when you watch a great fighter getting ready for the kill, see?

He tells her she is a great singer just waiting to be discovered. He is impressed by her star quality and spark of
genius:

You've got that little something extra that Ellen Terry talked about. Ellen Terry, a great actress long before you
were born. She said that that was what star quality was - that little something extra. Well, you've got it.
Norman tells her she is wasting her time singing with a small band. While driving her home, he asks what she is
thinking, and they end up discussing their idiosyncrasies with each other:

Esther: Do you know the only thing I can think of right now? The only thought that comes into my mind is the
way I wash my hair. You see, when anything happens to me good or bad, I make straight for the shampoo bottle.
Why would I have to think of that now?
Norman: I understand that perfectly. With me, it's golf balls. If I'm happy or if I'm miserable, I - I putt golf balls
around the living room. It makes perfect sense.

She tells him about her life story:

I can remember my first job singing with the band. And then one night stands clear across country by bus.
Putting on nail polish in the ladies rooms of gas stations, waiting on tables. Wow! That was a low point. I'll
never forget it. And I'll never never do that again, no matter what. But I had to sing. I somehow feel most alive
when I'm singing.

They arrive at her furnished singles place, and she invites him in to look at her scrapbook. After divulging
everything about herself, Esther asks Norman:

Have you had enough, as the Republicans used to say?...You know about as much about me now as I do about
myself.

Esther dreams of having a lucky break, being discovered by a record company talent scout and having a number
one hit song. But she expresses pessimism: "...It won't happen." But Norman has great confidence: "No, it might
happen very easily. Only the dream isn't big enough." He again asks her to give up her small-time band for a
chance at a movie career. He advises her:

Listen to me, Esther, a career is a curious thing. Talent isn't always enough. You need a sense of timing - an eye
for seeing the turning point or recognizing the big chance when it comes along and grabbing it. A career can rest
on a trifle. Like - like us sitting here tonight. Or it can turn on somebody saying to you, 'You're better than that.
You're better than you know.' Don't settle for the little dream. Go on to the big one...Scared? Scared to take the
plunge?

He gives her some final words of encouragement before he leaves: "Don't ever forget how good you are. And
hang on to that. Because I'm right." And then, he delivers his trademark farewell words to her, repeated later in
the film: "I just want to take another look at you."

Too excited to sleep, she goes upstairs to tell her pianist Danny that she is not going to Frisco with the band the
next morning. "Norman Maine is going to get me a screen test." Danny can't believe her, accusing Maine of
making a 'conventional pass.' But Esther will not be swayed:

He gave me a look at myself I've never had before. He saw something in me nobody else ever did. He made me
see it too. He made me believe it.

She is determined "for a chance at being something, something bigger than I ever dreamed of. And I'm not going
to turn back now, ever." Danny thinks she is a fool.

The next day, Norman leaves town for six weeks, shooting a new film in a distant locale. He can't recall her
address. Meanwhile, Vicki has left her band and become unemployed. In the meantime, she has provided the
singing voice for television commercials and worked as a carhop in a hamburger drive-in.

Hearing her voice singing a commercial on TV, he finally locates her. He sponsors her entry into show business,
recommending her for a screen test. She passes the test and is hired as a contract bit player at the Oliver Niles
Movie Studio (Norman's studio), although she is treated as another one of Maine's conquests. She is shuttled
through the studio, passed from one person to another, greeted cordially but impersonally: "Glad to have you
with us."
In Vicki's first minor acting role, she is yelled at by the director for not following his directions in a farewell
scene: "I don't want to see your face, see." By the end of the week, she is renamed Vicki Lester. Then, Maine is
able to cajole the reluctant studio head Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) to listen to Vicki sing and she gets her
big break. She is put in the lead singing role of a musical comedy when another singer cancels out of her
contract.

In this lead film role, seen in the film's preview screening (a 'movie within a movie'), at a special showing in
which Norman's new film is also being previewed, she performs the classic, 18-minute sequence, opening and
closing it with "Born in a Trunk." It is one of the finest and most distinctive musical film sequences ever made. It
is presented as a career success story, a vaudeville performer's rise to stardom, and an exquisitely-staged musical
"biography" of Vicki Lester's character. (It is also a near-autobiographical account of actress Judy Garland's own
show business career). In between the opening and closing song, she comments on being a "ten-year-overnight
sensation," singing such classics as "I'll Get By," "You Took Advantage of Me," "My Melancholy Baby," and
"Swanee" (in a minstrel-like performance, wearing a man's hat and suit).

Vicki's film debut is a sensational success, compared to the lukewarm reception that Norman's film receives. He
begins to experience mixed feelings about his protege, sensing that her burgeoning film and musical career will
leave him far behind:

It's all yours, Esther. And I don't mean just the Cadillacs and the swimming pools. It's all yours, in more ways
than one...You're going to be a great star, Esther. Don't let that change you too much. Don't let it take over your
life. You're very dear.

She senses his awareness that he destroys everything to which he gets close:

Vicki: Norman, don't you know how I feel about you?

Norman: Yes, yes I do.
Vicki: Well, then dear, don't you know that nothing about you could make any difference?
Norman (despairing and warning her): It's too late.
Vicki: No, it isn't.
Norman: It is, I tell you...Now listen to me. I destroy everything I touch. I always have. Forget me. I'm a bad
loss.
Vicki: I don't believe that.
Norman: You've come too late.

Esther wants him to believe that it is not too late and that they should give themselves a try.

During a recording session, Norman proposes marriage - she accepts his "public" proposal, and they proudly tell
Niles and receive his blessing. After they have left, Libby comments that Vicki is walking into a "booby trap."

Vicki marries the aging Norman Maine in a very secretive and small justice-of-the-peace ceremony (they are
married under Norman's legal name as Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sidney Gubbins), without a studio publicist in
attendance. Libby feels betrayed and frustrated, wishing to have capitalized on the event of their elopement with
some publicity. He chastises them:

If you'll be kind enough to glance between my shoulder blades, Mr. and Mrs. Gubbins, you'll find there a knife
buried to the hilt. On its handle are your initials.

After their idyllic honeymoon, her career takes off with a blossoming film career and a number one hit song, "It's
a New World." Norman is confronted by Niles, the head of the studio, who informs him that the rest of his
contract will be bought up and paid off. Norman is to be dropped at the studio, because he has become too big a
risk, lapsing in his screen performances due to his alcoholism. Norman admits his bad sense of timing:

You know, Oliver, I sometimes think I was born with a genius - an absolute genius - for doing the wrong thing.

The studio makes the action look as if Norman asked for a cancellation of his contract, to free him to make long-
overdue changes in his career. But his career topples and he must remain at home waiting for screen roles,
playing solitaire and putting golf balls, while Vicki spends her long days at the studio.
When Vicki returns one night from rehearsal, wearing a pink shirt and dark-colored tights, she finds Norman
lonely and eager to see her. She performs her most recent production number for him, playing all the parts. For a
brief moment, he comes out of his depression, and has a pillow fight with her. Then he pulls her down behind the
sofa. But they are interrupted by the doorbell. A package arrives, and the delivery boy asks Norman: "Who are
you?...Sign right there, Mr. Lester." This sends him into a tailspin. He realizes how much attention she is
receiving and how much the public has already forgotten him. Norman tells Vicki: "I think I shall mix myself a
drink." Their marriage begins to unravel.

A few weeks later, in the annual Academy Awards Banquet Ceremony, the second of three Hollywood
ceremonies, Vicki wins the Academy Award Oscar for Best Actress. In the presentation ceremony, she delivers
her acceptance speech, graciously accepting her award:

When something like this happens to you and I'm not going to lie to you and tell you I didn't keep hoping it
would happen. All the speeches that you've made up in your bedroom or in the bathtub go out of your mind
completely and you find that, out of all the words in the world, just two stick in your mind - thank you. And all I
can do is say them to you from my heart and...

In the next classic film moment, a drunken Norman interrupts Vicki's speech, arriving late and clapping
obnoxiously from out in the audience. He approaches the stage as the shocked audience tries to keep him quiet.
Lurching on stage, he reels around rubber-legged, and then delivers a self-pitying speech, humbly pleading with
the audience and national television for a job (he sits down on the steps for part of his speech):

Congratulations, my dear. I made it just in time, didn't I? May I borrow the end of your speech to make a speech
of my own? My method for gaining your attention may seem a little uncon-unconventional, but, uh, hard times
call for harsh measures. My - I had my speech all prepared, but I - it's gone right out of my head. Let me see -
why, it's silly to be so formal, isn't it? I-I know most of you sitting out there by your first names, don't I? I made
a lot o' money for you gentlemen in my time through the years, didn't I? Well, I need a job now. Yeah, that's it.
That-that-that-that's the speech. That's the - I need a job. That's what I wanted to say. I - I need a job. It's as
simple as that. I - I need a job, that's all. My talents, I may say, are not confined to dramatic parts. I can play
comedy, too.

As he rambles on, he gestures wildly, swinging his arms out and accidentally slapping Vicki in the face. The
audience gasps in shock. Hiding her embarrassment, she laughs, brushes her tears aside, and helps him off the
stage to her table.

The damage has been done and Norman's career is finished. He must enter a sanitarium for treatment of his
alcoholism. Vicki confesses and weeps to studio head Niles that she can't understand his illness and
deterioration:

What is it that makes him want to destroy himself?...You don't know what it's like to watch somebody you love
just crumble away bit by bit, day by day, in front of your eyes, and stand there helpless. Love isn't enough, I
thought it was. I thought I was the answer for Norman. But love isn't enough for him.

The effects on Vicki are noticeable, and she helplessly finds it hard to admit that:

...sometimes, I hate him. I hate his promises to stop, and then the watching and waiting to see it begin again. I
hate to go home to him at nights and listen to his lies...I hate me cause I've failed too.

Niles suggests that he will try to help Norman get work again. Vicki seems relieved: "All he's got left is his
pride." Niles briefly visits Norman at the sanitarium, and gives him a possible acting role and script. Norman
comments about reactions people will have to him after he is released:

I shall have to introduce myself all over again to a lot of people. They won't know me when I'm not drinking.

After Norman's discharge months later, he spends some of his time at the Santa Anita Race Track. In the club
house bar, he encounters his old adversary Libby who immediately insults him and tells his former client off. To
provoke a fight, Libby accuses him of living off Vicki's earnings:
Friends, my eye! Listen. I got you out of your jams because it was my job, not because I was your friend. I don't
like you. I never did like you. And nothing made me happier than to see all those cute little pranks of yours catch
up with you and land you on your celebrated face.

Norman objects: "Pretty work, Libby. Always wait till they're down, then kick them." He attempts to strike
Libby, but is knocked down. An onlooker comments: "Drunk again. He's been drunk for years." Provided with
an excuse to continue drinking, a humiliated Norman changes his drink from ginger ale to a double scotch.
Going on a monumental drunken binge, Norman is scandalously arrested four days later, and brought to a night
court.

In a heartbreaking scene, Norman is publicly reprimanded by a judge (Frank Ferguson) in a Los Angeles jail on
drunkenness charges, and sentenced to 90 days in jail. Vicki pleads with the judge during the hearing, the
sentence is suspended, and Norman is placed in her custody. She takes him to their Malibu house.

There, while he is sleeping, she watches him sleep off a drunken episode, commenting to Niles: "He looks so
helpless lying there smiling in his sleep just like a child." On the porch, torn between her career and her husband,
she tells Niles she plans to quit Hollywood so she can go away for good and take care of him, to restore his
health. Niles doesn't think there is much hope left:

There's nothing left anymore. It happened long before last night...20 years of steady and quiet drinking do
something to a man.

Vicki refuses to believe that there isn't hope. Sleeping in the next room, Maine overhears their conversation and
can't believe his ears. In anguish and with a look of agonizing self-loathing, he buries his face in his pillow.

In the next scene, after Niles has left, a smiling Norman enters the room in an upbeat mood. Wearing a robe and
swimming trunks, he is asked how he feels, and responds:

'As fit as a fiddle and ready for love,' though why being as fit as a fiddle should make one ready for love I never
understood. How did they decide that a fiddle was fit?

He announces that he is going to start his changed life with a healthy swim - to turn his life around. He requests a
song from unsuspecting Vicki. And then he makes a final request, stopping short to take one long look at her
before she walks away out of view:

Hey - just wanted to look at you again.

She sings "It's a New World" and goes inside, as he wades into the ocean. Norman commits suicide by drowning
himself. It is a genuinely tragic, but inevitable demise. The headlines rule the death an accident: "Ex-Film Star
Victim of Accidental Drowning," although it is obvious that he sacrificed his life for her so that she could fulfill
her potential in her career.

For weeks, Vicki is grief-stricken, hysterical, and solitary. Her studio accompanist, Danny McGuire, comes to
take her to sing at the scheduled Shrine Theatre benefit. He tries to get her to shake her grief and criticizes her
for wasting the career that Maine died to keep from destroying: "You just gonna sit here forever?" He believes
she can keep his memory alive:

Sympathy? That's not what you're getting from me, baby. You don't deserve it. You're a great monument to
Norman Maine, you are. He was a drunk, and he wasted his life, but he loved you. And he took enormous pride
in the one thing in his life that wasn't a waste, you. His love for you and your success. That was the one thing in
his life that wasn't a waste. And he knew it. Maybe he was wrong to do what he did, I don't know. But he didn't
want to destroy that, destroy the only thing he took pride in. And now you're doing the one thing he was terrified
of, you're wiping it out! You're tossing aside the one thing he had left. You're tossing it right back into the ocean
after him. You're the only thing that remains of him now. And if you just kick it away, it's like he never existed,
like there never was a Norman Maine at all.

Vicki turns toward Danny, realizing that his words are true, and with tears in her eyes, asks: "Would you wait for
me?" She is persuaded to come out of mourning to perform.
In the film's memorable poignant ending, one of the greatest endings of any movie in the 1950s, Vicki, escorted
by Danny, shows up at the Shrine Theatre, the thirdHollywood ceremony in the film. She passes by the wall with
the heart and arrow drawn in lipstick by Norman so many months before. The emcee (Rex Evans) is announcing
that she will not be appearing, but receiving a whispered message, he then excitedly announces: "Vicki Lester
will appear tonight!" Before singing, Vicki steps into the spotlight and with a strong and confident voice, she
honors her late husband's name:

Hello everybody - this is - Mrs. Norman Maine.

There is a slight pause and silence, and then the audience stands and bursts into ecstatic applause. The camera
pulls back slowly, ending with a long shot of Esther smiling through her tears.

So, while the film was positioned as a star’s celebratory return, given the plot and the not-so-secret
Hollywood knowledge of Garland’s emotional problems, it became instead a self-referential
psychodrama with music.
Given both the pre- and postA Star Is Born history of Garland, the film is awash in complex subtexts.
Garland plays Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester, the up-and-coming star, as the old Good Judy — the
massively talented but naive entertainment dynamo. But Garland is also embodied in the self-
destructive alcoholic Norman Maine (James Mason) as the Bad Judy, the emotionally free-falling
human car wreck, the actor hitting the skids in Vicki Lester’s wake. In a scene where Vicki breaks
down in clown makeup and asks benign studio head Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) in a desperate,
pained voice, ‘What is it that makes Norman want to destroy himself?’ the similarities to her own
blighted off-screen life are close enough to make one squirm.
But all of that is just a disturbing freak show undercurrent to a film that boasts Garland’s greatest
performance. Her ‘Born in a Trunk’ production number captures her showbiz intensity and her jittery
humor is succinctly captured in ‘Somewhere There’s a Someone,’ a neat and nasty parody of the
pretentious MGM musical production numbers of that era. But if ever an Oscar could have been
bestowed upon a performer for one musical number, it should have been for Garland’s electrifying
rendition of ‘The Man That Got Away.’ Utilizing the teetering emotionalism of her voice and the edgy
gestures of a crack-up, Garland’s off-the-cuff jazz club take on the Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin tune is
as raw-bonded and unforgettable as a spinal tap.
This is not to downplay James Mason’s intense performance as Norman Maine. Suave and sardonic
and at ease even when in an alcoholic haze, Mason gives an excruciatingly believable, gut-wrenching
performance.
A Star Is Born was one of the early Cinemascope productions. Cukor is clearly uncomfortable with the
format, awkwardly balancing most of the widescreen frame with palm trees, lampshades, automobile
windshields and mirrors. Creative framing kicks in only during his Cocoanut Grove Academy Award
ceremony where a nicely-framed shot of Vicki Lester’s table with Garland on the right and an empty
chair (and frame space) on the left accentuates the absence of her husband Norman. There is also a
brilliantly composed shot of Vicki accepting her Oscar, and she is seen dwarfed in center background
while a television camera tracks in.
Quotes and lyrics ESTHER

BLODGETT: You should see

what comes out of the ground and down from the ceiling. You've never seen anything like it in your

life. Wait a minute. Wait, here, I'll

put the practice record on and show you. Lights! Camera! Action! I'm discovered sitting on a rather
simple divan. ESTHER BLODGETT [singing]: Somewhere there's a someone / Who's a someone for
me / Someday there will come one / And my lover he will be / Somehow I shall know him / From the
moment he's in view / And he'll know affection / He's never known hitherto ESTHER BLODGETT:
Now we have a stunning shot with the clock. ESTHER BLODGETT [singing]: I pay no mind to the
waiting / Let the clock tick-tock away / The dream I'm contemplating / Will be here to stay /
Somewhere in the sometime / When the humdrum... ESTHER BLODGETT: You know I get pretty
girlish in this number. ESTHER BLODGETT [singing]: With that

someone I'll be someone at

last ESTHER BLODGETT: Now, here comes a big, fat close-up. ESTHER BLODGETT [singing]:
With my someone I'll be someone at last NORMAN MAINE: Not a harp! ESTHER
BLODGETT: There's always a
harp in a dream sequence, don't be silly. NORMAN MAINE: The heavenly choir? ESTHER
BLODGETT: Yeah, 20 girls just came up out of the floor. And there's smoke all over the room.
ESTHER BLODGETT: I'm discovered on top of the Eiffel Tower. NORMAN MAINE: Of course.
ESTHER BLODGETT [singing]: This is the story of a little girl / Searching, searching, searching / For
she knows somewhere / Is a someone who is a someone for her / This is a story / Somewhere is a
sometime / Where the heart from days of past / With my someone I'll be someone at last / With my
someone I'll be someone at last" ESTHER BLODGETT: They discover me in China, too. ESTHER
BLODGETT [singing]: Somewhere she will find him somewhere / Somewhere she will find him /
Nowhere! ESTHER BLODGETT: Africa! NORMAN MAINE: Brazil, I told you! ESTHER
BLODGETT: Right! Brazil it is.