A Star Is Born Again

I mentioned a restoration technique that I thought was interesting when I discussed Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. A complete soundtrack was still extant but whole chunks of footage were missing. Instead of discarding the soundtrack, the restoration team opted to replace the missing parts with appropriately placed still pictures.

Mason in costume

When the time came to restore A Star Is Born, a similar problem occurred. Even before the film’s premiere, many scenes were removed to tighten an already long story. Scenes of Norman Maine shooting a pirate film on location are now only remembered through a few stills.

Mason in a pre-premiere outtake

But this can be considered part of the making of the film. However, soon after the premiere, Warner Brothers decided that the film was too long and an intermission was inappropriate. So under the pressure of local distributors (who wanted a shorter film to allow more showings per day) the film was heavily butchered in several places without the assistance of director George Cukor. Since the idea was to shorten the film only through editing, no reshoots were planned to explain missing plot points or to sweeten awkward transitions.

Deleted picnic scene

That meant that once it was decided that the first scene of Norman Maine’s extensive search for Esther was gone, the rest of the scenes had to go too. And indeed it did, along with two musical numbers (when there weren’t that many to begin with) and many other scenes.

The restoration began when the complete monaural copy of the soundtrack was located in the vaults of Warner Brothers. This gave the restorers the hope that, if the missing footage could be located, the world could once again see the original edit of the film. Their goal was to show it to George Cukor who could never sit through the film again.

At the time the decision to cut the film was made, Warner requested the cuts of the copies already in circulation to be shipped back to the studio. It soon became apparent that they had not only tossed away these cuts, but had also cut the original negative and thrown away the outtakes.

With apparently nothing to work with, they went on an extensive search for uncut copies. Except for the missing musical sequences that they got from the vaults of the studio or from a private collector who had stolen the “Long Face” sequence long ago, the all important dramatic scenes of the first third of the film could not be located in their entirety. The decision was taken to use the bits of film found in the department that stored stock footage (the bits and pieces that were considered usable for other films like streets, cars, locations, etc.) and the studio stills over the soundtrack in place of the cut scenes.

The main problem with this was the fact that, to save on costs, and unlike the regular studio practice of the time, very few studio stills were taken on this production (one only per scene average). So they sometimes had to recreate a still by combining several unrelated ones or by completely photographing new scenes (The tenant of the Oleander Arms is an actress from the eighties).

In spite of that, two dialog-heavy scenes still had to be shortened for the restoration, the complete version of which are offered as bonus features on the Blu-ray.

However, the result looks marvelous and even though the appearance of the stills intercut with live footage can seem weird to some, it does help to raise awareness to film preservation. Unfortunately George Cukor died before this restoration was completed and screened.

As a matter of fact, according to this article, at least one complete copy of the film (and even some scenes cut prior to release) still exist in the hands of a private collector named Michael Arick, which seems believable enough considering how the "Long Face" sequence was recovered. However, due to a conflict about a previous collaboration with Warner over a complete print of A Streetcar named desire (among other things), Arick does not wish to deal with them again. Let's pray that the film will some day be complete.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

The Blu-ray also offers other versions of the very famous Man That Got Away sequence, because it was filmed to playback several times before everyone involved was satisfied with costumes, lights and the overall look of it.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

I strongly suggest you to buy the soundtrack CD if you like the film. After all, it IS a musical. Also, a great book called “A star is born, The making of the 1954 movie and its 1983 restoration” was written by Ronald Haver, who is responsible for this restoration. The first part tells the fascinating story of the film at the time of the making which helps to explain the decisions made at the time regarding its fate (it was the first Warner Cinemascope picture), and the second part is about the epic restoration.

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That’s all for today folks!