by Sid Luft
Since shooting on Star was supposed to be finished, the soundstages had been shut down. We hired a new crew to shoot “Born in a Trunk.” Irene Sharaff came out from New York and did the costumes. The sequence took five days to shoot and would lengthen the film by fifteen minutes. On its completion we threw an enormous party at our home for everyone connected to Star and friends. The inside and outside of the house were lit by rows of pink and white candlelight; pink and white flowers were arranged in large masses everywhere. Champagne and music were flowing. We were confident Star was a big hit.
Judy, in spectacular form, looked sixteen. She was greeting the guests at the door when Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz arrived. Someone remarked to Judy, “You know Lucy?” Judy perversely answered, “Boy, I hate this woman!” She was sardonic, as she adored and respected Lucy. After fifteen minutes or so she was informed that Lucy was weeping in one of the upstairs bathrooms and refused to come out. Judy raced upstairs to Lucy, who admitted she’d taken Judy’s riposte to heart. Judy was astonished. She apologized and kissed Lucy, explaining it was nothing more than a tease. Incidents such as this never deterred Judy’s sense of humor or her style.
The buzz surrounding Star had continued to build. There was so much hullabaloo over Judy’s performance—all the congratulations justified the extra work and expense. Harry Warner shook my hand. Benny Kalmenson thought it was tremendous. He was hoping to book the film simultaneously in two New York theaters, one on Broadway that would run Star from eleven in the morning until two at night, and the other a smaller house that would play the film on a two-a-day basis with an intermission. Star was going to be a blockbuster! One of the most talked-about films in history.
The L.A. premiere was considered the last of the Hollywood-style premieres. The footage from the TV coverage shows movie icons, along with those who would later become household names, streaming en masse into the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. I was quite drunk during all the ballyhoo. Spotlights had been arranged to form a large, glistening high star over the theater. An estimated twenty thousand fans jammed the vicinity. Much ado about Baby Gumm/Cinderella/Dorothy.
We took off for the New York premiere with a sense of victory. Judy was very up—and pregnant with our second child. She was eating what she wanted, rested, and back to her wholesome mode. We stayed at the Waldorf Towers, where we celebrated my birthday along with the premiere of our film. Judy gifted me with diamond cuff links shaped in a clover cluster and diamond tear-shaped studs. She wrote on the hotel’s stationary, “Happy Birthday, I’m so in love with you darling—Judy.”
The actual premiere was held in the smaller house without an intermission. The response was incredible. Judy was at the center of social activities. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were in town; Babe Paley hosted a dinner. Other friends were on the scene, including Peter Lawford and his new wife, Patricia Kennedy, with Pat’s brother Jack Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts.
JFK was young, lanky, and extremely outgoing. He’d asked Peter and Pat to introduce him to “Dorothy” in the flesh. With Kennedy’s gift for oratory and Judy’s talent for telling stories, it was the start of a fun-loving, comfortable friendship. Judy and I shared the same perception—that brother and sister alike were still suffering the loss of their older brother Joe.
Prince Aly Khan was also staying at the Waldorf Towers. Aly had known Judy since MGM; he’d visited her on the set many times. He was involved with the glamorous Gene Tierney, who adored titles, having already been married to “Count” Oleg Cassini. Gene was a great beauty with slanted, turquoise eyes, a flawless complexion, and a gorgeous figure. She was one of the great beauties off screen as well as on. It seemed at the time that she would be Aly’s next princess, but that unfortunately was not to be.
Aly and I had been together socially in Hollywood, and we shared a passion for horses, women, and fast cars. While he could easily afford each category, I was in the audience. I was a faithful husband. I drove fast, but I didn’t race cars. Aly took risks. I once accompanied him on a hair-raising ride to Normandy at 130 miles per hour to look at horses. Along the route he’d stashed three different women in various hotels and villas. The idea of fidelity was foreign to him. He was famous for his sexual endurance, supposedly practicing an ancient Muslim technique that prolonged the sexual act indefinitely. We never discussed our personal lives, however. He was impossible to keep up with in every department. Aly gave Judy and me extravagant gifts, including an exquisite diamond and emerald brooch in the shape of a tortoise. One Christmas I received sapphire and diamond cufflinks. He was generous, at times embarrassingly so.
The reviews of Star made the front pages of Variety and the Reporter, the two trade bibles. (Films are normally reviewed on the second page.) Column after column was written. The movie had ended up costing $5 million, which was an astronomical cost in 1954. At the same time, it added to the movie’s glamour. Everyone seemed to think Judy would get an Academy Award and the film would gross “at least $25 million,” to quote Sam Goldwyn.
Professionally, I was flying high, but personally, it had been a hell of a year. Just months earlier, my father had died suddenly. Had it been so long since we last saw each other? It seemed like we’d just been strolling down Columbus Avenue in New York after a leisurely dinner, father and son. We talked about my sister, Peri, what a talented painter she was. I admitted I was a dilettante by comparison. Norbert confided he’d suffered minor heart problems—translated, he meant attacks. His wife was concerned but he was not. He assured me there was nothing to worry about. We exchanged exotic information: I confessed I was going to marry Judy Garland, and he told me he was taking nitroglycerin.
I thought he’d successfully underplayed his condition, then left me the very moment in our lives when we were appreciating one another. As his death weighed on me, I began to show signs of stress. I ran into Pam and James Mason at a fundraiser, and Pam, noticing the deep circles and shadows under my eyes, jokingly asked, “Is there a panda in your past?”
Then the professional difficulties began. When Star premiered, it clocked in at just over three hours. It was long, and I suggested an intermission. Jack agreed with me, but the regional theater owners didn’t go for it. Ominously, they started to complain that three showings a day would not be enough; they demanded a cut short enough to fit in five daily screenings. As intermission was rejected, so was raising the admission price to compensate.
In matters of distribution, Harry Warner ruled the studio with an iron fist. Though he and his brother Jack hated each other, Jack could not go to banks and borrow money on film production without Harry’s approval. So Jack had no choice but to agree when Harry said, “We need a bigger turnover in grosses. We’ll cut the film.”
Cukor was in India, so he left it up to Folmar Blangsted, the editor, to make the key decisions regarding how to cut down the picture. Folmar’s second wife, Else, said he was distressed. He wired the director in India but was left hanging. The cuts were eventually arrived at over the telephone. Two musical numbers were cut, both vintage Garland: “Lose That Long Face” and the great “Here’s What I’m Here For.” I’d begged Cukor to make the cuts himself, but he had refused to alter anything before he left. Folmar never spoke with Cukor again.
In the end, the studio butchered the film to benefit Harry’s projected cash flow, cutting it down from three hours to 154 minutes. Harry anticipated an astronomical profit, but overnight Star was transformed from a sure winner into a loser. The film could not work, in my opinion, except in its entirety.
I said to Alperson, “The distribution is fucking up this film, Eddie.” He said to consider it out of our hands.
We were committed to promotional tours in the four major cities—New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles—and were both obligated to attend all regional openings. Judy lost interest in the tour. Her pregnancy, already in its fifth month, furthered her discomfort and disinterest. She wanted out. I was firm: we must do everythin
g possible to promote it. After all, it was still our film.
The film’s grosses fell off as word circulated about the nearly half hour of deleted material. Judy and I took the brunt of this disappointment. We were heartbroken. People came up to me: “Sid, have you seen what they’ve done to your movie?”
There’d been a convention of theater owners in Pennsylvania. The Paramount theater chain offered Warner’s a 90/10 deal. It was a chain of fifteen hundred theaters, having nothing to do with Paramount Pictures. Ninety percent of the box office gross would go to Warner’s and 10 percent to them, but the film had to be shortened further. It was an offer Warner’s couldn’t refuse. Judy and I pleaded, “Don’t do it.”
Not only did Harry have the power over Jack, but he was getting old and a little dingy too. Now he complained Jack had spent too much money on the film to begin with. Harry’s spiel was “Money isn’t coming in fast enough.” The new cuts—down to 100 minutes—would enable two matinees. The Paramount theater owners began to show the cut version, and this time the critics took note of it. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it “A Star Is Shorn,” and the pun echoed through Hollywood. The grosses fell off by half. We went from heroes to failures. I said to Judy, “Jesus, baby, this picture is not going to make any money!” We couldn’t believe what was happening.
Thirty years later Ron Haver, head of the department of film at the L.A. County Museum of Art, went through hundreds of pieces of film to recover most of the lost celluloid. The original cut was put back together, reopened at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and proclaimed a “classic.” In the August 1983 issue of American Film, Haver chronicled his efforts. Referencing the premieres of the restored print in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Dallas, he assured the reader that they “will serve to give audiences the chance to experience hundreds of ‘those little jabs of pleasure.’” Pleasure he’d apparently reveled in as a teenager when he first saw the film. In the last paragraph of the article he wrote of the achievements of George Cukor, Judy, James Mason, Moss Hart, Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin, musical director Ray Heindorf, and cinematographer Sam Leavitt. But he failed to mention me as the film’s producer.
An even more lethal blow to the ego awaited me at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. It was a benefit celebrating the restoration of Star. Acting president Fay Kanin introduced the film to the audience and, like Haver, forgot I was the producer. I sat separated from those who had the illusion they had not only recovered lost footage but had produced the film. It was eerie, as though I never existed. I was in a twilight zone where a guy who fought for the film, busted his ass to get it to function, got it to work, was totally forgotten. Sammy Leavitt approached me after the screening: “Sid, this is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever attended.”
The restored version of Star went on to sell to television and on videocassette. The film would earn back every penny, plus an ongoing profit.
But back in 1954, I felt destroyed as a producer, and Judy was devastated. Film critics were all-powerful and influenced the box office results. Star lost money in the first eighteen months, the grosses falling from almost $500,000 a week to $200,000. The film actually grossed about $18 million, but it needed to gross about $20 million to break even. I was personally blamed for the film’s financial failure.
There were offers for Judy to star in other films—the screen adaptation of John O’Hara’s bestseller Butterfield 8—but she was not able to be so quickly back in front of the cameras. Elizabeth Taylor starred instead and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. MGM asked Judy to headline the film version of South Pacific and The Three Faces of Eve. In the case of the latter, I thought it too close to home, though it ended up winning Joanne Woodward an Oscar. We were exhausted from our efforts of nearly three years to bring off Star. The decimation of the film left us burnt out. We would have to pick ourselves up from the ashes.
Judy went into labor at Cedars of Lebanon hospital on March 28, 1955, two days before the Academy Awards dinner was to be held at the Pantages Theatre. Dr. Morton, Judy’s obstetrician, tied off her fallopian tubes at her request during the cesarean operation. I waited in the room with Frank Sinatra and Betty Bacall Bogart, who were keeping me company.
What seemed like eons passed and still no word. It was early the morning of March 29 when the three doctors, Morton, Dietrich, and Rabwin, appeared to tell me Judy had given birth to a premature baby boy whose one lung had not yet opened. Suddenly we were in the midst of a personal melodrama wondering if our baby was going to survive.
Judy was very brave and kept her anguish to herself, as though she was holding her breath until she heard one way or the other. Fortunately, our son Joseph Wiley made it. Judy wept openly when Joey was finally placed in his mother’s arms.
What followed on March 30 certainly didn’t equal the drama she’d been through. With Judy being the presumptive Academy Award winner, she was miked up in her hospital bed, prepared to tell the TV public her feelings on receiving the Oscar for Best Actress. Look magazine had already given Judy its award for best female performance of the year; we’d considered that a pretty good indicator. The competition for Best Actress included Jane Wyman, Dorothy Dandridge, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn. Betty Bacall was at the theater ready to run onstage and accept the Oscar on Judy’s behalf.
I held Judy’s hand as the TV technicians wired her up for the win. John Royal, an old friend, was with us along with Gundy that night. Star received six nominations: Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Song, Best Score, and Best Costume Design. But A Star Is Born did not receive one award.
Grace Kelly won Best Actress for her performance in The Country Girl. Judy was funny about it; she certainly didn’t flip out. She’d had so many acclaims, so many awards. Groucho Marx sent her the now-famous telegram, “Greatest robbery since Brinks,” which pretty much echoed our sentiments. Vern was so deflated. He arrived long after the awards had been announced, expecting to find us in mourning.
I was told the count was very close. The Academy members from Metro and Paramount voted for Grace to win. She was on a loan-out to Paramount from Metro, where she was under contract. I liked Grace, but I thought she gave a cockamamie performance in an old sweater and a funny voice. We’d felt helpless, as Warner had not publicized Star in the trades, and at the time Jack was in personal conflict with the Academy.
Cukor believed that Academy members were influenced by the cuts to the film. Its very rhythm had been disrupted. Without moments of relief, the performances tended to look exaggerated. Cukor thought this cost Judy the Oscar.
A salvage clause had been written into the agreement between Warner Bros. and Transcona that allowed for any of the partners to purchase whatever was bought or rented from the studio at the end of the production, for ten cents on the dollar. The partners had first choice, the studio second. There were objects, furniture, and paintings we liked, and we took advantage of the salvage clause. Jack recalls this episode in his memoir unfairly; he writes that I came to him with a story that we didn’t have furniture for a party, and he loaned everything to me on the condition I bring it back at the end of the weekend. In fact I bought the merchandise for the agreed sum, $4,000. When I sued Jack for libel, I won my suit.
I would continue to become more and more acquainted with Jack’s ruthless tendencies. I had never questioned why Jack Jr. didn’t join us for lunch in the green room. It was later that an ugly scene unfolded. Jack Sr. fired Jack Jr. in front of other people, then had his son escorted off the lot by the police. He was tough on Jack Jr. and humiliated him. He didn’t wish to recognize him as a professional. The younger Warner was born to wealth, an upbringing that was the opposite of his father’s, who grew up struggling and scuffling economically, from shoe repair to butcher shop to mogul, the story of the American Dream. Jack Sr. couldn’t forget his humble beginnings, and he was bitter.
Jack also sabotaged his relationship with his brother Harry. Both
agreed to sell their shares in Warner Bros., but Jack later reneged and watched his share rise. By 1958, shortly before Harry died, the brothers were not speaking. In 1967 Jack sold his holdings and earned a 33 percent profit.
It wasn’t his family alone who suffered the slings and arrows of Jack’s wrath. His blistering typhoon desecrated other lifelong relationships. When he sold the studio, Jack told Bill Orr to fire his partner in a successful TV series. “Fire Benson, he’s finished” (one of Warner’s favorite edicts). “And when you’re through firing Benson, fire yourself. I’m closing out.” Then he called in David DePatie, his comptroller. Warner announced, “I’m going to Palm Springs. I want you to fire Steve Trilling.” One of the most respected men in the industry, Trilling was head of the studio, a decent, well-liked person who had worked for Jack for more than thirty years. Mrs. DePatie told me that he then repeated the litany, “After you get Trilling off the lot, you can wind up your business, and fire yourself, too.” That’s how lifetimes of allegiance ended. Everyone was treated as an inferior. People he had depended on like Richard Gully and Elsa Maxwell were servants to him, and he could snap them out of his life like blowing out a flame.
I could have continued developing projects at Warner’s, but my impetus to produce turned sour. I certainly wasn’t going to waste any time making conventional movies. I’d come a long way from exploitation films, but I now had an unrealistic approach to the business. My new point of view was that film had to be creatively worthy. This was bullshit, as box office most often buys ordinary concepts.
We broke our contract with Warner’s. Jack, of course, said anything to vindicate himself. He was a powerhouse with the press, and the disinformation was that I didn’t know what I was doing, and Judy had caused the film to go over budget.
I’m told Warner fell in love with the film later on.
