A Star Is Born (1954): The Chaotic Comeback of Judy Garland — A Troubled Production, a Studio Butchering, and an Infamous Oscar Upset

When They Were Making It

This episode explores the turbulent production of the 1954 remake of A Star Is Born, which was intended to facilitate a massive Hollywood co

Key takeaways

• Producer Sid Luft secured a nine-film deal with Warner Brothers to bankroll Garland's return to the screen.
• The production suffered significant delays and costs when forced to switch from the in-house 'WarnerScope' to the superior CinemaScope format.

Main topics

• Judy Garland's career decline and MGM exit
• The partnership of Sid Luft and George Cukor

Notable quotes

An old friend is back.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a poignant reminder of how studio politics and t

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) A quick content note before we begin. This episode includes discussion of a suicide attempt, self-harm, and prescription drug dependence. These moments are handled with care, but we wanted to give you a heads up. It also includes references to some of A Star is Born's most iconic scenes. If you've never seen the film and would like to watch it first to avoid spoilers, we'll be here when you get back. And if you'd rather just jump in, that works too. Every episode of when they were making it is built to bring you into the story from the beginning. You don't need to know the film or the people behind it to enjoy the episode. Thank you. Speaker 1 (0:52) Los Angeles, December 1952. The Brown Derby is packed. On the face of it, it's just another day in a busy Hollywood restaurant. Booths full, waiters cutting between tables, everyone in the room aware of everyone else in the room. But it isn't as simple as that. Because this is the place where deals get made. Not the place where deals get signed. That happens elsewhere, with lawyers in the room. But this is where they get decided. Where, over a Cobb salad and a martini, someone tries their luck on someone else and finds out whether a picture is going to happen or it isn't. Producer Sid Luft is here to try his luck on director George Cukor. Calling Luft a producer may be generous. A former pilot and one-time talent manager, Luft has producer credits on exactly two pictures, both B-movies, both forgettable. But he wants more than that, and he has a project that could finally give him more. The project is good, really good. But it also asks a great many people to believe in something they have reason to doubt. He's gotten a few of them on board already. The studio, the rights holder, his own wife. Warner Brothers has agreed to bankroll it, Edward Elperson has signed over the remake rights, and Judy Garland, the reason any of this exists in the first place, has agreed to star. A new musical version of A Star is Born, built as her way back to the screen. Getting here was its own mountain to climb. But George Cukor, who Luft is here to meet, somehow is the one who could actually make it feel real. One of the most respected directors in Hollywood, a man who has turned down this very material once already. If he agrees to direct, this stops looking like a gamble and starts looking like a picture. All Luft needs is a guess. As he reaches the table, Cukor looks up, unhurried, the way a man looks up when he already knows what's coming and isn't in any rush to meet it halfway. Speaker 1 (3:36) They order. They talk about nothing for a minute. The trades, someone's picture, the rain that isn't coming. Then, before Luft can find his way into the pitch, Cukor gets there first. If you need someone to direct Judy, he says, I'll do it. Just like that, Luft has his yes, and he hasn't even asked the question yet. That yes, as promising as it is right now, is going to cost them both. A production that will be pulled and have to be rebuilt as they go along. A shoot that will run for the better part of a year and blow through more than twice its budget. A performance that will be called one of the greatest of its kind. And a studio that will take a knife to the film around it anyway. Sid Luft, sitting in the Brown Derby, doesn't know any of that yet, of course. All he knows is that he came here for a yes. And George Cukor has just given him, and Judy Garland, exactly what he came for. Speaker 1 (5:27) Welcome to When They Were Making It. I'm your host, Patrick Rankin, and this is the podcast that dives deep into the glorious, often messy, and utterly human stories behind Hollywood's greatest films, and the legends who created them. Today, we are exploring the 1954 version of A Star is Born, how a sprawling, troubled production brought Judy Garland back to the screen, and how, in the end, what was meant to be a new beginning became something far more complicated. Speaker 1 (6:12) The 1954 version of A Star Is Born did not begin with a script or a studio deal or even an idea. It began with a star hitting rock bottom. By June of 1950, Judy Garland was at a breaking point. Mentally, physically, and professionally. She was 28 years old, and she had been under contract to MGM since she was 13. In those past 15 years, she had become one of the most beloved performers in the world. First as the girl from The Wizard of Oz, then as the star of Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, Easter Parade, and Summer Stock. She was now one of MGM's biggest stars. But the studio had built her career on a schedule no adult could have sustained. let alone a teenager when it all started. Diet pills to keep her thin for the camera, stimulants to keep her moving between numbers, sedatives to bring her back down at night so she could do it all again the next morning. MGM had manufactured Judy Garland, the star. It had built a machine around her and expected her to keep running. But by 1950, she couldn't. That summer, Garland was supposed to make Royal Wedding opposite Fred Astaire. It would have reunited them for the first time since Easter Parade, the 1948 musical that had been a major hit for MGM. Like Easter Parade, it was built around the idea of Judy and Astaire as performers. They would play a brother and sister dance team traveling to London for a royal wedding, where both find themselves falling in love. Garland had only joined the picture after June Allison, who had originally been cast in the role, became pregnant and had to leave. MGM called Garland in quickly. But this was not a fresh start. The year before, Garland had been pulled from Annie Get Your Gun after a troubled production marked by missed days and mounting exhaustion. MGM had suspended her, and Betty Hutton had been brought in to take over that role. Royal Wedding was another chance. And by now, the studio was watching closely. At first, Garland made it to rehearsals on time, but by the beginning of June, she was late again. Her energy was failing, and MGM agreed to let her work half days. By the middle of the month, she had been late on nine of the 18 days she had worked on the picture. On the morning of June 17th, Garland called the studio and said she had woken with a migraine and could not make the afternoon rehearsal. MGM, in response, took her off the picture and placed her on suspension. Jane Powell was brought in to replace her. The studio had lost patience. And two days later, Judy Garland, well, she broke. That afternoon, she was at home with her husband, Vincent Minnelli, and her secretary, Myrtle Tully, when she ran down the hall and locked herself in the bathroom. They heard her scream, leave me alone, I want to die. When she would not open the door, Minnelli broke it down with a chair. She had smashed a water glass against the sink and cut at her throat. The wound was shallow, but by the next morning, the headlines were everywhere. Judy Garland cuts throat over lost job. Judy Garland slashes throat after film row. Judy did not go back to Royal Wedding. And she didn't go back to MGM. On September 29th, after 15 years at the studio, Garland's contract with MGM came to an end. Some accounts have MGM finally losing patience and cutting her loose for good. Others say it was Garland herself who asked to be released. That after everything, she was the one who couldn't do it anymore. What's clear is simpler than either version. After 15 years, the studio that had built Garland was done. And apparently, so was she. For the first time since she was a teenager, Judy Garland was on her own. And what had happened over the past few years, the pills, the breakdowns, the missed days, the suspension, was no secret. Not to the public, not to Hollywood. And no studio stepped in to pick up where MGM had left off. No film offer waited in the wings. Garland was one of the most talented performers alive, and no one wanted to hire her. Not because the talent was gone, that was still there. Because she just couldn't be counted on anymore. Her problems were too great. So, to most people in Hollywood, this wasn't just a setback. It was a verdict. Judy Garland was finished. Not just off a picture. Not just out of MGM. Finished. Then, on October 11, 1950, Bing Crosby did something that would matter more than anyone realized at the time. He had Judy Garland on as his guest for the season premiere of his CBS radio show. It wasn't Garland's first time on with Crosby. The two went back years, old friends who'd sung together plenty of times before. But this time was different. This was Garland's first public appearance since the breakdown, since the headlines, since the world had decided she was through. And backstage, she got scared. At the last minute, she nearly didn't go on, telling people around her that no one in the studio audience would be listening to her sing. They'd be looking for scars on her wrists. Crosby went to her himself and talked her through it. Then he walked out to the studio audience and reportedly told them simply, an old friend is back. Garland went on, and the show went out on the air like nothing had ever happened. Which was huge. Crosby, an industry giant, was vouching for her. Publicly, on the air. Garland herself would later say, That moment, I felt the whole world change. It was real friendship. Around this time, while she was still married to Vincent Minnelli, Garland reconnected with someone she'd known for years. Sid Luft. They'd first crossed paths back in the 1930s, on an MGM set, when Garland was still a young teenager, years before The Wizard of Oz had made her a star. Now, in 1950, they met again, this time at a nightclub in Manhattan. And the connection was immediate. Both were coming out of marriages that hadn't worked. Luft's divorce from actress Lynn Barry had just gone through. Garland's marriage to Minnelli was already unraveling and wouldn't formally end for another few months. Garland and Luft became close and began an affair. They also began a business partnership, and in early 1951, Luft became Judy Garland's manager. Sid Luft was not, on paper, an obvious person to rebuild a movie star. His own daughter, Lorna, would later describe him as a tough guy out of Guys and Dolls, a description Garland reportedly found part of the appeal. Warner Bros. head Jack Warner would be significantly more blunt. He's one of the original guys who promised his parents he'd never work a day in his life, and made good. Before Hollywood, Luft had been an amateur boxer good enough to earn the nickname One Punch Luft, then a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, then a wartime test pilot for Douglas Aircraft. He drifted into show business, working as personal manager to the MGM dancer Eleanor Powell. From there, he opened a custom car shop on Rodeo Drive. Then he helped produce two forgettable B pictures. By any normal measure, Luft was a hustler who hadn't yet made anything stick. But he saw something in Garland that Hollywood, at that moment, refused to. And he set about making them see it, too. He had an idea. Get Judy Garland back in front of a live audience. Not on a soundstage, not through a studio microphone, but on a stage alone, the way she hadn't performed since she was a teenager. Prove she can still command an audience. Prove she can still do what she does best. Prove she can still actually show up. And then worry about getting her back on screen. Luft booked Garland four weeks at the London Palladium. It was a considerable gamble. Garland hadn't headlined a live show in over a decade. But more importantly, there would be no editing, no retakes, no studio machines standing by to catch her if something went wrong. On April 9th, 1951, Judy Garland walked out onto the Palladium stage. And she was, well, Judy. The nerves, whatever had been there backstage, gone the second the lights hit her. The same presence, the same voice, the same something no one else in the world had. The reviews that followed weren't just ecstatic, they were something closer to relief. One London critic reportedly wrote that Garland had emerged from the shadows to find the public likes her as she is, even more than what she was. The rest of the run went the same way, sold out night after night, and Garland kept delivering. She would later call those four weeks in London among the most memorable of her entire life. The London triumph didn't stay in London. That July, Garland's tour carried her to Dublin, where 14 sold-out shows at the Theatre Royal drew crowds of a size the city had never seen for a single performer. When she arrived, so many people were waiting outside her hotel that she ended up singing to them from her own window. Dublin was another success. But neither London nor Dublin was ever really the end point. Garland had proven herself overseas. Now came the real test, New York City, in front of the very industry that had given up on her. On October 16, 1951, Judy Garland opened at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. Outside the palace, the crowd built for hours before the doors even opened. Police had barricaded the block, struggling to keep the crowds back from the theater entrance. Robert Sylvester of the Daily News wrote, Never in this reporter's memory has there been such a furor outside and inside a single theater. The room itself was packed with exactly the people Garland needed to convince. Press, industry insiders, the kind of crowd that could make or break a comeback with a single bad word. The lights went down. Garland opened with Call the Papers, then On the Town, then a run through the old songbook, Jolson, Gershwin, Irving Berlin, building toward Get Happy, and then, to close, Over the Rainbow. When she finished, the ovation didn't stop. It just kept going. The audience on its feet, refusing to let her leave. Many people in the crowd openly crying. Life magazine would later write, For days afterwards, people around Broadway talked as if they had beheld a miracle. Garland was booked at the palace for four weeks. She would stay for 19. It was official. Judy Garland was back. Sid Luft had what he needed. Proof. And a real case for starting to look at a screen return. In fact, he'd already been thinking about it before the palace curtain had even gone up. And he already knew what it was going to be. That September, weeks before opening night, Luft had proposed the idea to Garland. A remake of A Star is Born, the 1937 melodrama starring Janet Gaynor as a small-town girl who becomes a Hollywood star, and Frederick March as the fading alcoholic actor who falls for her, builds her up, and destroys himself in the process. It had been produced by David O. Selznick two years before he made Gone with the Wind, and it was a prestige production from his own company, Selznick International, shot in three-strip Technicolor at a time when color was still rare and expensive. It had been a major critical and commercial hit, earning seven Academy Award nominations, winning one plus a special honorary award. for its pioneering color cinematography. Luft's pitch was clear. They'd take A Star is Born and turn it into a musical. Build it around the one thing the original never had. Judy Garland's voice. And it turns out, she didn't need convincing. She already had her own history with the story. Back in 1942, on a luxe radio theater broadcast of A Star is Born, Garland had played Esther Blodgett, later renamed Vicki Lester within the story itself, the role Janet Gaynor originated, opposite Walter Pidgeon as Norman Maine. It was just one performance, one night on the radio, but something about the part had stayed with her. But there was another reason remaking it made sense. One that had nothing to do with Garland at all. Television had made remakes good business. Remakes weren't unusual in Hollywood. The industry had been repurposing its own hits for decades. But by