by Lorna Luft
Mama appears very happy (and very pregnant with my brother Joe) with Marlon Brando and Edmond O’Brien at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards, February 1955. As this candid photo illustrates, Mama was always the life of the party and all eyes were invariably on her. She won Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for A Star Is Born at the banquet; Brando won Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for On the Waterfront (1954); and O’Brien won Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for The Barefoot Contessa (1954).
Because her reputation had been somewhat tarnished by her later years at MGM, she was particularly gratified that her peers, the critics, and the industry as a whole now embraced her and A Star Is Born.
My mother was thrilled by the overwhelmingly positive reception. Because her reputation had been somewhat tarnished by her later years at MGM, she was particularly gratified that her peers, the critics, and the industry as a whole now embraced her and A Star Is Born. She had cut her losses, started fresh at a new studio (with a new husband-producer in her corner), and had succeeded on a grand scale. Mama was officially back, and she was the toast of the town. And she didn’t have to grovel or beg for a second chance. Like Frank Sinatra, she did it her way. It must have been one of the most rewarding periods in Mama’s career.
Most who saw the original cut of the film, running three hours and one minute, were not bothered by its length. But for some, 181 minutes of Judy Garland’s talent was a little too much. Playwright and composer Noël Coward, a great friend of hers, nevertheless wrote in his private diary, “Every song was attenuated to such a length that I thought I was going mad.… One in particular, ‘Born in a Trunk,’ started brilliantly but by the time it was over and we had endured montage after montage and repetition after repetition, I found myself wishing that dear enchanting Judy was at the bottom of the sea.”30 Coward, known as “The Master,” was not alone in his reaction to Mama’s film. Many found it overwhelming, intense, and exhausting. It was also extremely long. As early as mid-October, dissatisfied theater owners and operators complained that they could only screen the movie three times per day due to its running time. They wanted a box-office-friendly blockbuster that they could unreel four times a day. Jack Warner heard the grumblings, but was not inclined to axe thirty minutes out of a picture in which he was personally invested, a film of which he was truly proud. But at the Warner offices in New York City—from which Jack’s elder brother Harry called all the shots as president of Warner Bros.—the word was “cut!”
The brothers Warner had always had an adversarial relationship, Harry being the intimidating force over the otherwise confidant and controlling Jack. Other strategies might have worked, namely turning the film into a road-show event with higher ticket prices. Harry would not entertain any compromises. The exhibitors wanted four shows a day instead of three. Harry was adamant on the cuts that Jack knew would gut the film—not only at that time, but forever. Barrie Richardson of the Warner Bros. sales department selected what was to be cut, and film editor Folmar Blangsted carried out the work without the consultation of George Cukor, who was in India at that time directing Bhowani Junction (1956). The studio eliminated the unwanted material from the original negative and discarded the excised footage. Additionally, all 200 full-length prints in existence were cut at the various film exchanges to conform to the new, shortened 154-minute length for wide release. I’ve even heard that, in a few instances, Warner Bros. sent instructions for the film to be cut by projectionists. It’s like the L. P. Hartley line, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” It’s insanity thinking about it now. No projectionist would take a pair of scissors to a Spielberg movie. The entire job was botched. They did surgery on a healthy patient without anesthesia, removing major organs and expecting the patient to survive. These film trims were sent back to Warner Bros. where they were destroyed. Incredibly, Warner Bros. didn’t retain a single print of the original, full-length 181-minute version that was seen and reviewed in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere to great critical acclaim. Harry’s edict failed to please anyone, but he seemed to take pleasure in invading his little brother’s territory. But in winning the battle, he lost the war, the spoils of which destroyed A Star Is Born at the box office.
Mama in a moment of reflection during a rehearsal. Photo by Sanford Roth.
The new version, at 154 minutes, eliminated entire scenes. In chronological order:
1) Esther says good-bye to the band at the bus the morning after Maine’s peptalk.
2) Maine, half-asleep, bundled into a town car to be taken to his movie’s location.
3) Esther washes her hair at the Oleander Arms.
4) Oliver Niles on the telephone to Maine’s director.
5) Maine on the telephone to his assistant, trying to locate Esther.
6) Esther at her rooming house, getting news of a singing gig.
7) Esther sings for Trinidad Coconut Oil Shampoo.
8) Esther in uniform at a drive-in, talking to Danny in a telephone booth.
9) Esther offers a customer “everything in the place, all burgered!”
10) Maine at Oleander Arms with the landlady.
11) Maine, with Lola Lavery, hears, then sees, the Trinidad commercial on television.
12) Maine finds Esther at the rooming house.
13) Maine and Esther drive to the sneak preview.
These are severe first-act cuts that explode the narrative into fragments, leaving the audience wondering what they missed. The revised story line jumps from Esther telling her friend Danny that she is quitting the band’s tour, to the studio makeup department where Esther is being readied for her screen test. The second-act omissions are fewer but no less damaging, because they are two song cuts: the recording session of “Here’s What I’m Here For,” the setting for Norman’s marriage proposal, and the “Lose That Long Face” production number. “Born in a Trunk” survived, as well as “Someone at Last,” but the scissoring left the first act without its logic and its emotional center. It also left first-time viewers in the dark.
Mama was in shock when informed about the extent of the cuts. She told Dad, “Do something!” He was powerless as he didn’t have final cut over the picture. Mama felt the rug had been pulled out from under her. That safety net that she craved, once again, had disappeared. Mama relied on my father for certain things, and this was one of them. She couldn’t do it all. There was simply no time. My mother managed a lot of living and accomplishment in her relatively short life. Mama received all her training by simply getting up there and performing on the stage and later as one of the “Meglin Kiddies” (a children’s dance school.) Later, she had great teachers, coaches, and mentors at MGM. The only thing they failed to teach her were the skills of a CPA and attorney. Why would anyone expect her to understand the business side of making movies? That’s what my father was supposed to look after. Dad, feeling betrayed, blamed Jack Warner. Liza, then eight years old, remembers the night our mother found out about the massive cuts, including “Lose That Long Face.” Mama came up to her room in tears and said, “They just don’t care.”31 It soon became even worse. Suddenly, lawsuits were threatened and pursued against my father, in separate actions by Harry and Jack Warner, each claiming my father had wrangled loans from them in the course of making the picture. The dollar amounts were negligible to the mogul brothers, but the point seemed to be the shaming of Sid Luft, whom they had both come to personally loathe. (The two brothers also despised each other with an enmity for the ages. In 1956, the two remaining Warner brothers sold 90 percent of their Warner Bros. stock to a syndicate, but the crafty Jack Warner used the sale as a scheme to rid himself of Harry, as he repurchased the shares and then some in a secret deal. Jack L. Warner emerged president of Warner Bros. with Harry out of a job.)
Dad had gambled once too often with the big guys, and lost again. After a promising start, the very bad word of mouth for the cut version scuttled hopes for the mov
ie’s chances. Despite the buildup, the critical praise, and the virtually unanimous approval of the original edit, the butchered version of A Star Is Born was a financial failure. The fallout was more than just a disappointment or an economical loss; it was a personal failure for Judy Garland—one from which her film stardom would never fully recover.
Mama prepares backstage for a concert at the Greek Theatre, a 5,800-seat music venue in Los Angeles, June 1957. This was my mother’s last stop on a nine-week tour. It was her first appearance in Los Angeles since her spectacular “comeback” at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium five years earlier and broke the previous box office record.
Warner Bros. did not mount an aggressive Oscar campaign for Mama or A Star Is Born. But there was still a glimmer of hope: the Oscar nominations were announced in the spring of 1955. The final five in contention for Best Actress were Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen Jones), Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina), Grace Kelly (The Country Girl), Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession) and Judy Garland. A Star Is Born received five other nominations, a large number, considering the financial disaster the film had become. The recognition had been part of Mama’s comeback dream all along. Though she had won the Juvenile Award miniature statuette for her work in The Wizard of Oz, Mama craved the cachet a “real” full-sized Oscar would bring with it—a heavy, gold-plated certification of respect, even love, from an industry that had brought mixed blessings into her life.
On the evening of March 28, however, Mama was showing signs of premature labor. Hurried to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills, she gave birth at 2:16 a.m. to her third child and first son by Caesarean section. He weighed five pounds, eight ounces, and was given the name Joseph Wiley Luft. Two of the biggest events in her life bumped up against each other. The Academy Awards ceremony was to be held on the 30th, and Mama was still in the hospital.
In a 1957 article published in McCall’s, my mother recounted her Oscar night experience:
There I was, weak and exhausted.… As I lay there in bed, the door burst open and in came a flock of TV technicians. I already had a television set in my room, but they dragged in two more huge ones. When I asked why two sets, I was told that I would have to talk back and forth to Bob Hope, who was master of ceremonies at the awards, and they couldn’t take a chance on one of the sets not working properly. Then they strung wires all around the room, put a microphone under the sheets and frightened the poor nurses almost to death by saying, “If you pull up the Venetian blinds before they say ‘Judy Garland’ we’ll kill you.”
Outside the window I could see the cameramen on the tower getting ready to focus on me in bed. Then someone turned on the TV set and Bob Hope came on. We listened to the whole ceremony, the excitement building up. Then Bob announced the winning actress. It was Grace Kelly.
I didn’t have time to be disappointed, I was fascinated by the reactions of the men. They got mad at me for losing and started lugging all their stuff out of the room. They didn’t even say good night.32
Kelly was a newcomer who had been working in Hollywood only four years, as opposed to Mama’s twenty. Good friend Lauren Bacall was with her in the hospital that Monday night, and wrote later that she was gracious in defeat, saying her baby boy was much more important than any award. Bacall remembered:
The big night came and we were all gathered around our sets praying—and Judy lost. She carried it off beautifully, saying her son, Joey, was more important than any Oscar could be, but she was deeply disappointed—and hurt. It confirmed her belief that the industry was against her. She knew it was then or never. Instinctively, all her friends knew the same. Judy wasn’t like any other performer. There was so much emotion involved in her career—in her life—it was always all or nothing. And though she put on a hell of a front, this was one more slap in the face. She was bitter about it, and, for that matter, all closest to her were.33
Disbelief and outrage mixed with support were expressed publicly and privately. Lucille Ball had spoken to the national television audience on the night of the Hollywood premiere, declaring, “Judy and James and George Cukor and everybody else in this picture are going to take all the Academy Awards they have. I’m sure of it!” Groucho Marx sent what became a famous telegram, “This is the biggest robbery since Brinks.”34 Hedda Hopper maintained it had been the closest race in Oscar history (short of a tie), just seven voters separating the two nominees, “You know who those seven votes were, don’t you? They belonged to those bastards in the front office of MGM.”35 Hopper was referring to the residual resentments at the studio regarding Mama’s final years there. Garland biographer Christopher Finch is of the opinion that the votes against the temperamental star and producer were a “reprimand” for the profligate production.36 George Cukor believed, “The picture is totally fragmented. I think it accounts for why Judy Garland didn’t win the Academy Award.”37 Just as Norman Maine backhanded Vicki Lester on the stage at the Academy Awards, so the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seemed to slap Judy Garland, in one of the greatest upsets in Oscar history.
A Star Is Born garnered other nominations: James Mason for Actor in a Leading Role; Gene Allen, Malcolm Bart, Irene Sharaff, and George James Hopkins for Art Direction/Set Decoration, Color; and Mary Ann Nyberg, Jean Louis, and Irene Sharaff for Costume Design, Color. Ray Heindorf’s music scoring was nominated, as was Mama’s signature song from the film, “The Man That Got Away” by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen. But the award went to “Three Coins in the Fountain” by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, a win even the composers thought misguided, when compared to the Gershwin/Arlen masterwork. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual award ceremony, the Golden Globes, held earlier in the year, were staged at the Cocoanut Grove, a venue that seemed to dog Mama’s steps. She and Mason were named Best Actress and Actor, Musical or Comedy. Best Picture, Musical or Comedy, however, was awarded to Carmen Jones. Mama was nominated for Best Foreign Actress by the British Film Academy. George Cukor won the Directors Guild of America Award, while the National Board of Review named the film to its official Top Ten of 1954. The New York Film Critics Circle revealed both Mama and James as second-place Best Actress and Actor.
Movie offers and project pitches didn’t stop after Mama lost the Oscar. The Three Faces of Eve (1957) was sent to her first, but she and my father quickly turned it down, even though she thought she could play the hell out of it. Joanne Woodward benefited from Mama’s noncommittals, unavailability, withdrawn offers, and delayed projects. George Cukor disowned the movie, yet he accepted Jack Warner’s offer to direct another musical film—a full-fledged musical classic, at that—My Fair Lady (1964). It won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Go figure.
Mama greets her fans at Carnegie Hall, April 23, 1961. This was Mama’s most famous concert performance, and the album made live from the event was her greatest recording success.
As a person and a performer, my mother moved on, determined to be victorious, though my father continued to play the victim. After his failure as a producer, he blamed friends as well as foes. Mama, always in need of funds, optimistically turned to television guest spots and solo programs. The concert stage and nightclubs also appeared viable again, thanks to the boost the movie gave her name on a marquee. Dad remained by her side, battle after battle. Mama could not know that her next film was years away, and she had three children—and a husband—to support. (My father acted as her manager when he wasn’t betting on the ponies at Hollywood Park or Santa Anita.) At the end of 1954, Mama signed a one-year contract with MCA for across-the-board representation. The agency would be in the Judy Garland business despite the crash-and-burn of her go-for-broke comeback movie, fielding requests for recording sessions, television appearances, live performances, and motion pictures.
A recording contract with Capitol Records, prompted by strong sales figures for the A Star Is Born soundtrack, was put together, and lasted through 1964, placing my mother on the same roster as Frank Sinatra a
nd Nat “King” Cole.
One year later, Mama and MCA agreed to another five years. A recording contract with Capitol Records, prompted by strong sales figures for the A Star Is Born soundtrack, was put together, and lasted through 1964, placing my mother on the same roster as Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole. In March 1955, Warner Bros. and Transcona Enterprises dissolved their multipicture deal, with A Star Is Born being the only film made under the agreement. Undeterred, the following month, my father announced a seven-city tour, to begin that summer, of The Judy Garland Show, a three-hour concert with special guests, climaxing with a two-month engagement at the Winter Garden in New York. The travel, city to city, reminded her of her childhood and adolescent years as a little vaudevillian. The stage fright that sometimes overtook her persisted, but a change occurred in her reaction. She fell in love with her audience.
My mother’s dependence on prescription drugs, the legacy left her by ill-advised and careless handlers during her contract years at MGM, continued to plague her. Benzedrine would spike her energy in the morning and throughout the day; Seconal would induce late-night sleep. A flask of vodka was nearly always available. Dad knew that, not long after Joey’s birth, she had been acquiring and using her prescription medication in alarming doses once again. He searched her bedroom, finding pills behind books, under the rugs, in her slippers and the hems of dresses, anywhere quickly stashed and easily retrieved. It has to be remembered that the prescriptions that were causing her dependency were from a doctor, so, in Mama’s mind, they were supposed to help her. Her mind and body craved these medicines and no one knew how to stop those cravings. It was called the “mysterious illness.” My father did his best. He fell in love with the brilliantly talented and funny person that Mama was, but the baggage that came with her stardom, I don’t think he was equipped to handle. Alcoholics Anonymous existed during this time, but how could someone like Judy Garland attend AA meetings and remain anonymous? Dad tried to control Mama’s needs with low doses, but conceded, “The fact is that she was married to the drugs before she met me, and she never really got divorced.”38
