One can tell David O. Selznick had too much control over this, the first "A Star Is Born," but which is otherwise a loose reworking of an earlier film produced by him, "What Price Hollywood?" (1932), and which itself has since been remade thrice over by Hollywood in 1954, 1976 and 2018. These meta narratives about show business seem most fascinating to me as reflections of the dominant talents involved in them. Two were directed by George Cukor, who as a gay filmmaker had an intimate understanding of the industry's double standards and was renowned for coaxing superior performances from female leads, which was surely vital when he directed Judy Garland, along with the baggage her star image brought, in the 1954 version. Likewise, Barbra Streisand's star dominated the 1976 production, while star-director Bradley Cooper and pop-star Lady Gaga competed with each other in the most-recent iteration. This 1937 one, however, is the producer's film.
Director William A. Wellman, apparently better suited for more masculine-gendered genres--such as war ("Wings" (1927)), gangster ("The Public Enemy" (1931)) and Westerns ("The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943))--doesn't have the same personal imprint as director of the likes of Cukor, despite sometimes-domineering producers and studio bosses (although, reportedly, Wellman's past drinking was the inspiration for the night court scene). While the picture begins and ends with the first and last pages of its own screenplay (an admittedly brilliant self-reflexive addition), a host of writers--some credited and others not--worked on this script, and it's not clear how much Dorothy Parker added to it, or whether any of the others lent a stronger voice than another. Plus, the scenario arguably cribs much from "What Price Hollywood?" The actors are decent-enough studio cogs, but don't lend anything especially meaningful, with one or two caveats that I'll get to later, to the proceedings with their star images. The early use here of three-strip Technicolor throughout a live-action feature was something of a novelty, though; indeed, it was honored with a Special Academy Award for the color photography. Two years later, with "Gone with the Wind" (1939), Selznick would further demonstrate his lack of dependence upon great directors--by going through three of them--nor, for that matter, writers or cinematographers. Lacking from "A Star Is Born" in visual spectacle is an overriding production design to put it all together, which is what Selznick got in William Cameron Menzies on "Gone with the Wind."
The results of Technicolor here, however, are as often a hindrance as they are a benefit. Although we get Gaynor's red hair, the lighting also tends to be flat, and while color may improve, say, a view of a beach skyline, the technology also comes off as dated and distracting in other places. Overall, this "A Star Is Born" doesn't deliver the sort of spectacle in visual compositions that the newfangled color demands; besides "Gone with the Wind," other films to shortly follow also better exploited Technicolor, including "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) and, of course, "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).
As for the narrative, the protagonist, an ingénue aspiring to Hollywood stardom, is beset on all sides--discouragement from her auntie, condescension from her landlord, humiliation and heartbreak from her drunkard husband, hounded by the press and abused by her fans--she is beset on all sides but for a couple: there's her kindly grandmother back home who provides the funds for her travel to Hollywood, her neighbor who works on and off as an assistant director and who gets her a job waitressing and, then, there's the most important of them all, the producer. And they got one of Hollywood's most urbane types to play the part, Adolphe Menjou. My only wonder is how much of this was Selznick's own ego and how much of it was that of others trying to flatter him. Regardless, it plays into the myth of the fatherly studio head innocent of the blatant wreckage wrought on some of the people working under them in Tinseltown. This may even be more egregious in the 1954 version when contrasting the fictional depiction with the biography of its star, Judy.
Gaynor and March don't have the same iconic or tragic status of Garland. March's star image doesn't lend much here except that maybe he'd already played some parts related to John Barrymore, one of the real-life star alcoholics these show-business movies may be inspired by. His first Oscar-nominated role came from, to an extent, playing Barrymore in "The Royal Family of Broadway" (1930), and his first win was in reprising "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931), which Barrymore had starred in one of the 1920 iterations. Both actresses, however, Garland and Gaynor, were experiencing career declines, albeit in different ways, when they made their respective versions of "A Star Is Born." Both were mature by Hollywood standards of the day to be playing the part of the ingénue. This plays well, especially with Cukor behind the camera, into Judy's camp appeal, and her added singing provides a natural means for her star to be discovered in the story. In this 1937 version, however, I guess it's just because Gaynor is pretty, as her character has no acting experience and never sings. I can only speculate what Cukor could've done to hint at Gaynor's rumored bisexuality or homosexuality.
The more intriguing part of Gaynor here, though, is the role of the Academy Awards. At this point, the Academy was only a decade old, and the Awards weren't the extravaganza they are now. There's no film or audio of Gaynor accepting the first Best Actress Oscar--before it was even called an "Oscar"--back in 1929. Besides, the awards were merely a side spectacle to the Academy's main business of thwarting unions on behalf of studio bosses like Louis B. Mayer. No wonder, then, that in a film already idealizing the production heads, it would also be the version of "A Star Is Born" to most frequently show Oscar (granted, the last two were set in the pop-music scene instead of Hollywood). It even casts the first star (besides that would-be Nazi Emil Jannings) to win an Oscar in real life--a star who, at the time of winning, was very much the ingénue she plays here, as Vicki Lester. Heck, March's character even relinquishes his contract with the studio once his movies cease being profitable. Meanwhile, actresses back then could be expected to--that is, they often did--retire at some point to become Mrs. such and such her husband's name. Indeed, Gaynor retired shortly after her resurgence from this picture. There's a dark underbelly of Hollywood exposed in "A Star Is Born," but it's not entirely the one that Selznick and his ilk wanted us to see.
Director William A. Wellman, apparently better suited for more masculine-gendered genres--such as war ("Wings" (1927)), gangster ("The Public Enemy" (1931)) and Westerns ("The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943))--doesn't have the same personal imprint as director of the likes of Cukor, despite sometimes-domineering producers and studio bosses (although, reportedly, Wellman's past drinking was the inspiration for the night court scene). While the picture begins and ends with the first and last pages of its own screenplay (an admittedly brilliant self-reflexive addition), a host of writers--some credited and others not--worked on this script, and it's not clear how much Dorothy Parker added to it, or whether any of the others lent a stronger voice than another. Plus, the scenario arguably cribs much from "What Price Hollywood?" The actors are decent-enough studio cogs, but don't lend anything especially meaningful, with one or two caveats that I'll get to later, to the proceedings with their star images. The early use here of three-strip Technicolor throughout a live-action feature was something of a novelty, though; indeed, it was honored with a Special Academy Award for the color photography. Two years later, with "Gone with the Wind" (1939), Selznick would further demonstrate his lack of dependence upon great directors--by going through three of them--nor, for that matter, writers or cinematographers. Lacking from "A Star Is Born" in visual spectacle is an overriding production design to put it all together, which is what Selznick got in William Cameron Menzies on "Gone with the Wind."
The results of Technicolor here, however, are as often a hindrance as they are a benefit. Although we get Gaynor's red hair, the lighting also tends to be flat, and while color may improve, say, a view of a beach skyline, the technology also comes off as dated and distracting in other places. Overall, this "A Star Is Born" doesn't deliver the sort of spectacle in visual compositions that the newfangled color demands; besides "Gone with the Wind," other films to shortly follow also better exploited Technicolor, including "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) and, of course, "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).
As for the narrative, the protagonist, an ingénue aspiring to Hollywood stardom, is beset on all sides--discouragement from her auntie, condescension from her landlord, humiliation and heartbreak from her drunkard husband, hounded by the press and abused by her fans--she is beset on all sides but for a couple: there's her kindly grandmother back home who provides the funds for her travel to Hollywood, her neighbor who works on and off as an assistant director and who gets her a job waitressing and, then, there's the most important of them all, the producer. And they got one of Hollywood's most urbane types to play the part, Adolphe Menjou. My only wonder is how much of this was Selznick's own ego and how much of it was that of others trying to flatter him. Regardless, it plays into the myth of the fatherly studio head innocent of the blatant wreckage wrought on some of the people working under them in Tinseltown. This may even be more egregious in the 1954 version when contrasting the fictional depiction with the biography of its star, Judy.
Gaynor and March don't have the same iconic or tragic status of Garland. March's star image doesn't lend much here except that maybe he'd already played some parts related to John Barrymore, one of the real-life star alcoholics these show-business movies may be inspired by. His first Oscar-nominated role came from, to an extent, playing Barrymore in "The Royal Family of Broadway" (1930), and his first win was in reprising "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931), which Barrymore had starred in one of the 1920 iterations. Both actresses, however, Garland and Gaynor, were experiencing career declines, albeit in different ways, when they made their respective versions of "A Star Is Born." Both were mature by Hollywood standards of the day to be playing the part of the ingénue. This plays well, especially with Cukor behind the camera, into Judy's camp appeal, and her added singing provides a natural means for her star to be discovered in the story. In this 1937 version, however, I guess it's just because Gaynor is pretty, as her character has no acting experience and never sings. I can only speculate what Cukor could've done to hint at Gaynor's rumored bisexuality or homosexuality.
The more intriguing part of Gaynor here, though, is the role of the Academy Awards. At this point, the Academy was only a decade old, and the Awards weren't the extravaganza they are now. There's no film or audio of Gaynor accepting the first Best Actress Oscar--before it was even called an "Oscar"--back in 1929. Besides, the awards were merely a side spectacle to the Academy's main business of thwarting unions on behalf of studio bosses like Louis B. Mayer. No wonder, then, that in a film already idealizing the production heads, it would also be the version of "A Star Is Born" to most frequently show Oscar (granted, the last two were set in the pop-music scene instead of Hollywood). It even casts the first star (besides that would-be Nazi Emil Jannings) to win an Oscar in real life--a star who, at the time of winning, was very much the ingénue she plays here, as Vicki Lester. Heck, March's character even relinquishes his contract with the studio once his movies cease being profitable. Meanwhile, actresses back then could be expected to--that is, they often did--retire at some point to become Mrs. such and such her husband's name. Indeed, Gaynor retired shortly after her resurgence from this picture. There's a dark underbelly of Hollywood exposed in "A Star Is Born," but it's not entirely the one that Selznick and his ilk wanted us to see.