A Star Is Reborn

There's an obvious irony to the fact that two corporate Warner cousins have invested so much money in, and have given such a grand platform to, a film that Warner Bros. itself so cavalierly mutilated. Even outside the drama surrounding the reconstruction and restoration, in terms of sheer tone, A Star Is Born's viciously cynical vision of the Hollywood life cycle would seem an unlikely choice to open a for-profit film festival that serves as a love letter to various eras of the studio system. It's much sadder and more sardonic than Singin' in the Rain, or even Sunset Boulevard (both of which are also on the festival schedule).

But TCM's Osbourne says Star's darkness makes it the perfect overture to a weekend-long conversation about Hollywood as both mythology and real industry.

The flop that foretold the future: Garland and Mason in A Star Is Born

Related Content

• Your Weekly Movie To-Do List
  July 12, 2012
• End of the Rainbow
  March 28, 2013
• Theater to See in L.A. This Week, Including a Triumphant Return of a Latter-Day Judy Garland
  March 28, 2013
• From Lawrence to Rambo: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List
  December 26, 2012
• Tween Art: OHWOW Gallery's New Show Explores the Disney Channel Demo
  July 26, 2012

More About

• George Cukor
• George Feltenstein
• Judy Garland
• Ronald Haver
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

"It is cynical, but happy stories about Hollywood aren't very interesting," he says. "The majority of the people who work in Hollywood are sensible professionals who show up on time and get the job done, or the industry wouldn't exist, because there's too much money involved to have it all riding on the crazy ones. But it's the crazy ones who make it interesting."

Garland was one of the crazies, a fiercely talented performer who, between hard living and crippling insecurities, couldn't always get it together to show up. Star is her most autobiographical work, and though in real life she may have more often than not fallen into the self-medicating habits depicted by Mason as part and parcel of the price of fame, Star's gut-wrenching climax exaggerates the all-consuming, destructive relationship between performer and audience that Garland herself knew well. In one scene, shot handheld with almost documentary-style immediacy, a veiled Garland pushes through a crowd of gawkers outside her husband's funeral. The clawing lookie-loos ultimately rip the veil off the widow with the gleeful cry, "Give us just one good look!"

"That's the moment of the film that just tears my heart to pieces," Feltenstein says. "That mentality of public people being public property. It's so real — and so out of today's TMZ."

Butchered due to a lack of foresight of the brothers Warner, A Star Is Born still managed to foretell the future.

A STAR IS BORN: Opening Night Gala of the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, April 22-25. Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. (323) 464-6266.