A Star Is Born Movie Download

5 / 10

Talk about inflation!…
The first version of this film in 1932 (What Price Hollywood) was 88 minutes long, the 1937 version was 111 minutes long, but this Warner Brothers 1954 version clocks in at over two and a half hours! The story is basically the same as the 1937 version – Heavily drinking and often absentee on the set movie star Norman Maine (James Mason) discovers, promotes, and falls in love with Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland), renamed to Vicki Lester by the studio. Norman and Vicki get married, Vicki’s star rises, Norman’s star falls to the point that people call him Mr. Lester. They completely forget who he is. He turns more and more to the bottle. Complications ensue. Except this time, since Judy Garland plays Vicki, there are lots of production numbers featuring her singing, with Vicki being a singing actress. So the original story has to fit in between numbers, because this is not an MGM musical. The songs are not part of the story and I don’t think they are even that memorable.

Warner Brothers was never really a studio that specialized in musicals, although they did have their hits throughout their history. This was just not one of them in my humble and probably unpopular opinion. I think that Garland and James Mason as Norman Maine and Vicki Lester are good together. I believe them as a couple. But just at age 32, time and addiction have taken a toll on Garland’s appearance where I just don’t buy her as the fresh young face.

And there are a couple of weird turns the film takes. For example, Jack Warner never said a nice thing about L. B. Mayer or MGM in his life. The two studios took digs at one another’s productions over the years. Yet at one point Judy as Vicki is supposed to be working on “An American In Paris” and she is basically giving it a plug in the dialogue of the script. The film had been released three years ago at MGM. What exactly was Jack Warner doing? There has to be a story there.

Jack Carson gives fine support as the publicity agent who throughout his career so far has played the jerk, but you get a subtle taste of meanness here in his performance that is quite authentic. He’ll perfect that meanness three years later in “The Tattered Dress”. Charles Bickford is the studio head who is stuck between the money guys back east and his personal attachment to his stars. Bickford is a guy who really evolved over the years – cut loose from MGM in the early 30s he went from being a lead in B films to being a fine supporting player in A list films, then transitioned to television.

I’m sure lots of people will disagree, but I just found myself looking at my watch during most of the musical numbers, waiting for the dramatic portion to start playing out again.Read More