by Lorna Luft
A portrait of a dashing Norman Maine as portrayed by James Mason.
A portrait of a drunken Norman Maine.
Finally, a dark horse raced to the head of the pack. British export James Mason, in the end, was deemed the best choice for the charming scoundrel Maine. Mason, unlike Cary Grant, leaped at the chance to work with Mama and to be directed by Cukor. Mason, a great English actor of British and American films, came into prominence with Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947) in his native England and starred as Brutus with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s acclaimed film version of Julius Caesar (1953) for MGM. Mama was acquainted with Mason since he had worked with Vincente Minnelli in Madame Bovary (1949). Although Cukor was generally known as a “woman’s director” (a label he resented), most savvy actors understood that Cukor was able to guide such leads as James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story), Ronald Colman (A Double Life), and later Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) to Best Actor Oscar wins. Mason’s best-remembered films include Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962), Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), and Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982). As for Mama, Mason recalled her as a delightful human being, “Judy was essentially a witty, lively, talented, funny, adorable woman.… Over and above her musical talent she was as funny as Lucille Ball, another lady of genius, and could have been as heartbreaking as Chaplin at his very best.”12 Despite his costar’s unreliable work habits, James Mason held fond memories of my mother and his experience on A Star Is Born. He remembered in his autobiography:
Norman Maine and Vicki Lester attend the preview of her first starring film.
Norman Maine slaps his wife during her moment onstage to receive her Academy Award.
Judy was not always reliable, in fact there were some days when she would not really be fighting fit until after the lunch break.… If the film went over budget only a very small fraction of the overage was due to Judy’s erratic time table.… Judy was by no means a temperamental star. “Temperamental star” is usually a euphemism for selfish and bad tempered, and a temperamental star of this sort can be a real time-waster. I have worked with some. And they are more rampant now than they used to be. But this was not Judy.13
The Moss Hart/James Mason incarnation of Maine is a far more predatory and volatile creation than the Fredric March character from 1937. Mason is hair-trigger, ready to rumble, but with a generous, nurturing inner nature to call upon. Out of Esther’s lovely raw material he forms Vicki Lester, just as Pygmalion sculpted Galatea and Professor Higgins shaped Eliza Doolittle. Naturally, he falls in love with his creation.
“Mr. Maine’s charm escapes me. It always has,” Matt Libby says wearily. Public relations man Libby has a tense, serial battle going with Maine, who creates chaos that Libby must de-escalate. Jack Carson does expert work inhabiting workaholic Libby; he is street-smart, a tough talker, and brings to the role a physicality that Lionel Stander lacked. Carson was a popular, wise-cracking character actor, best remembered for playing Wally Fay in Mildred Pierce starring Joan Crawford, and as “Gooper” in the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). A core player on the Warner Bros. lot, Carson had been friends with my mother for years; in fact, they knew each other back in Mama’s vaudeville days. Against Mason’s brittle star power, Carson makes the two an even match.
Matt Libby (Jack Carson) confronts Norman Maine (James Mason) at the racetrack.
To studio chief Oliver Niles, Charles Bickford brought the experience of nearly seventy-five motion pictures, such as Anna Christie (1930), Of Mice and Men (1939), and Johnny Belinda (1948), and had earned three Academy Award nominations for supporting roles as well as the respect of his peers. Not the natty, worldly Adolphe Menjou, Bickford portrays a benevolent, open-minded, yet straight-talking movie mogul with a powerful, gruff speaking voice. He is loyal to Maine, fatherly to Esther, and a close relative to actor Millard Mitchell’s performance as R. F. Simpson, the sympathetic big boss he portrayed in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Actual studio chiefs were hardly this benign. (William Powell was offered the part, but was not inclined to relegate himself to below-the-title roles.)
Danny McGuire was developed out of the sketch that was Grandma Lettie, mixed with a trace of Andy Devine from 1937, to create Esther’s accompanist, then vocal arranger, and, it seems, her only friend. Young character actor Tom Noonan had to wait for the picture’s end to grab a moment in the spotlight. Noonan was best known at the time of production for his supporting role as Gus Esmond, fiancé of Marilyn Monroe’s character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). According to Cukor, Noonan rose to the task as Danny shocks Esther out of her self-pity. Cukor recalled of the filming of one of the film’s big emotional scenes:
The press photographs Norman Maine (protected by Vicki and Oliver Niles) after Norman has been released from jail.
Toward the end of shooting we had to do a scene when she’s in a state of total depression after her husband’s suicide. While we lined it up she just sat there, very preoccupied.… Just before the take I said to her very quietly, “You know what this is about. You really know this.” She gave me a look, and I knew she was thinking, “He wants me to dig into myself because I know all about this in my own life.” That was all. We did a take.… a friend, played by Tommy Noonan, comes to see her to try and persuade her to go to a benefit performance that night. He chides her about not giving in to herself, he even gets deliberately rough with her—and she loses her head. She gets up and screams like someone out of control, maniacal and terrifying. And when Judy Garland did this, it was absolutely terrifying! She had no concern with what she looked like, she went much further than I’d expected, and I thought it was great.… So he grabbed her and held her and spoke his next lines with great force and energy. The lines were meant to shame her—and her reaction was unforgettable. She turned around, and you saw that all the anger and madness and fear had disappeared. Her face looked very vulnerable and tender, there were tears in her eyes. So I said, “Cut!” and then, “Quick let’s do it once more!”.… So Judy did it again—differently but just as stunningly.… Anyway, when it was over, I said to Judy, “You really scared the hell out of me.” She was very pleased, she didn’t realize what an effect she’d made. And then—she was always funny, she had this great humor—she said, “Oh, that’s nothing. Come over to my house any afternoon. I do it every afternoon.” Then she gave me a look and added, “But I only do it once at home.”14
Being a baby at the time, I, of course, don’t recall those days. But in the years to come, our home would be transformed into a battleground, noisy and combative, as my father became less and less my mother’s champion. Dad started out crazy about Mama and ended up being driven just plain crazy. As the variety of chemicals in my mother’s system caused her moods to swing up and down, she would pick fights with my dad seemingly out of the blue. But their volatile arguments started later. During the filming of A Star Is Born, I envision them as a mutually supportive team. Dad, like James Mason and others on the set, felt protective of my mercurial mama.
One memory of my mother comes from Lucy Marlow, an actress with a small featured role in the film as a movie starlet. On Oliver Niles’s arm at the “Night of the Stars,” she preens as Lola Lavery for the newsreel cameras in her black sheath and soufflé of white fox fur, diamonds nestled in her sleek up-done hair. They pause for the radio interviewer (Joan Shawlee, later to be Sweet Sue, leader of the all-girl band in Billy Wilder’s 1959 classic Some Like It Hot), who gushes, “Did you ever see anyone so sweet, so unspoiled, and down-to-earth? She’s a darling girl.” Marlow, who had been cautioned to tread lightly around the star on set, found herself struggling to unfasten her very tight bodice. Mama stepped in to help and confided, “Listen honey, I’ve got my money in this thing. If George says you’re doing something to help the picture, I’m all for you—you’re all right in my book.”15 That is the warm and welcoming side of my mother, though she was just as capable of an abrupt about-face, raging and shoveling up a mountain
out of a slight molehill. George Cukor, the hands-on expert on the star for the duration of the shoot, had his patience and professional demeanor put to the test frequently by her unstable muddle of ego and insecurity. But he always countered his frank assessments with assurances that “Judy Garland was a very original and resourceful actress.”16 There was no prototype for Judy Garland except Judy Garland herself.
Cukor’s movies often display an expressive use of composition within the frame. He knew not only how to shape a performance, but how to place it within the entire structure of a movie. The character, the colors, the position within the composition, were to be of utmost importance to him for this film. However, this was Cukor’s first color film. To offset his inexperience with Technicolor, he enlisted his friend, the renowned Russian-born fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, as color consultant and to create the overall color design for the film. Hoyningen-Huene’s experience with Harper’s Bazaar and in documentary filmmaking resulted in his use of dark, muted hues as a conduit of emotion and meaning. Later, the photographer expressed his view that “Color pictures usually have too much color. Color should be disciplined and an emotional stimulant.”17 The restrained color chart for “The Man That Got Away,” in its final form, is rich yet subtle in its mix of a nostalgic shade of rose red and mahogany backing up the navy blue of my mother’s simple dress.
Jack Carson, Mama, and James Mason. Mama made a point to be available on the set for her fellow actors. However, when she was not needed, she enjoyed Bette Davis’s old dressing room on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank.
Mama sharing a laugh with assistant dance director Jack Harmon (left) and designer Irene Sharaff (right) during production of the “Born in a Trunk” sequence.
The “art boys,” as Cukor called them, were led by Gene Allen in his return to the Warner design department. Allen began on the production as a sketch artist, but quickly oversaw all the scenic renderings and storyboarding, which included composition, lighting, and costumes, in his multiple duties. It ultimately led to his being credited as the film’s production designer and commenced a long professional collaboration with Cukor. Allen’s assistant, Malcolm Bert, assumed the position of art director, working closely with Hoyningen-Huene. The collaboration between all of these great talents is truly remarkable, and I find something to marvel at with every viewing. For example, the 2.35:1 aspect ratio matte paintings to simulate exterior backgrounds (in the days before digital technology) are theatrical but add a great deal to the production value of the film.
The esteemed cinematographer Harry Stradling, who photographed Garland’s Easter Parade, The Pirate, and In the Good Old Summertime, was to be cinematographer, but the delays in preproduction forced him to leave to fulfill a prior commitment. Sam Leavitt, Stradling’s frequent camera operator, came on board as his replacement. Leavitt began as an assistant camera operator in the 1930s, working his way up the ladder. His best-known credits, in addition to A Star Is Born, include the Otto Preminger films Carmen Jones (1954) and Exodus (1960) as well as Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for his cinematography.
Part of Cukor’s research during the preproduction phase was viewing The Robe, the landmark production in color and widescreen. He was a quick study, just like his star. Just as he had been an early pioneer during the transition period of silent films to “talkies,” Cukor assessed the new, primitive technology as he faced the challenge of telling an intimate story in the colossal dimensions of CinemaScope. He dismissed the so-called “rules” and insisted his team find solutions. He strove for atmosphere, detail, low-key lighting, depth of field, and color shading and texture in every single frame.
Mama in an early conception of her chanteuse costume in “The Peanut Vendor” flashback from the “Born in a Trunk” sequence. Designer Irene Sharaff replaced the costume for the more flattering dress seen in the final version of the film.
The visual quality resulting from the work of Cukor and his colleagues is stunning, a step ahead of the work being done elsewhere. The Cocoanut Grove—when Maine is on the prowl—is a shadowed harem of 2:00 a.m. stale smoke air, as Maine moves among the towering palms, as if stalking his prey in the jungle. The Downbeat Club, nearly closed for the night, is dim and blasé, a den of cast-off jazz, and a bold choice for a Technicolor musical. Test footage shows the club from setup to setup, descending into darkness, as Cukor and his team focus less light on the proceedings. The bar is behind a scrim (a theatrical term for a gauze cloth screen or backdrop), and thus rendered an abstraction—just a backdrop for the bravura performance. A scrim is employed again at the preview card reading scene and later at the party at the beach house. In one memorable moment, Norman and Esther embrace in semi-close-up, while guests barely move behind the scrim. They are almost mannequins, lit in rose tones, elegant, and spruce. An expansive aviary displays large, exotic, plumed white birds perched on the branches of a flowering tree. It’s a fitting setting for Norman’s moment with just-born star Esther on the terrace: the fame and the glamour of Hollywood are symbolized in the mansion aglow behind them and the city glittering below. As Norman reminds Esther, it’s all hers for the taking.
Mama rests on a dressing table and consults with an unidentified man during a break in production.
A portrait of Mama singing “My Melancholy Baby” from the “Born in a Trunk” sequence. This portrait was later used as the cover of Judy, Mama’s 1956 studio album for Capitol Records. Photo by Bob Willoughby.
The Maines’ brightly lit midcentury modern (as it would be referred to today) beach house in Malibu is where Esther stages her global trip around the living room for Norman. She employs practically every stick of furniture and bit of decor to entertain her out-of-work husband. It is an ingenious swap for a huge, expensive production number, designed and dressed to the hilt. (The house on Mapleton Drive, where we lived until the autumn of 1960, would see these treasures installed as soon as production wrapped.) Near the end, the beach house is dimmed for Maine’s last scenes. He pauses at the back door for one more look, then heads for the shore. Cukor stages the final swim much as Wellman did in 1937, but with the improvement of a deluxe panoramic Pacific Ocean view. A beach in Laguna, California, stood in for Malibu’s private coast. A few well-chosen locations lend the movie the grit and authenticity it might have lacked without them. The Shrine is a big hanger of an auditorium, but its daunting size ramps up the sense of possibility. Stan’s Drive-In in Hollywood, long-gone, is where Esther serves up nut-burgers. Piru, California, at that time a wide dirt road in search of a town, is the elopement destination. The Cocoanut Grove, the Lincoln Heights Jail, the Santa Anita Racetrack, and the Lancaster Hotel on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles portray themselves, as does the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, its front steps the platform for a mob of fans, press, and police.
Working closely with Gene Allen was costume designer Mary Ann Nyberg, Her résumé included Lili (1953) and The Band Wagon (1953), both receiving some attention. The dresses, gowns, dance costumes, and sportswear Nyberg created for Cyd Charisse in the latter film must have convinced my parents that she had the talent to work a little magic. (At age thirty-one, Mama’s life of nonstop work had caught up with her, making her look a few years older.) The costume budget with thirty changes for the star nearly doubled to $100,000, due to several contingencies: Mama’s weight gains and losses, her changes of mood and mind, her borrowing of the wardrobe for personal use and returning it in sorry shape, and her trickery in rejecting a new piece, only to pack it up and take home! Also, the script was in a constant state of reconsideration, wreaking havoc on both preproduction and production. Nyberg’s initial excitement to be working on Mama’s big star vehicle turned to dread. My mother had a problematic figure to clothe. At four-foot-eleven and one hundred pounds at her ideal weight, she was certainly petite, but when carrying extra weight, she appeared not to have a defined waistline, her hips seeming to emerge directly f
rom her small chest. Her long, slim legs were her pride and joy, and those must be given room to shine. She was a costume designer’s challenge.
Mama and James Mason during production of the Academy Awards sequence.
Filming Vicki Lester receiving her Academy Award. One of the incongruities of the film is having the Academy Awards depicted as a banquet held at the Cocoanut Grove. Although that is how Mama remembered the Academy Awards in her early years (she received her juvenile award at the Cocoanut Grove in 1940), by the 1950s the Academy Awards ceremony ceased to be an intimate banquet and had evolved into an event held in a large theater such as Grauman’s Chinese or the RKO Pantages in Hollywood.
