Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Dec. 9, 1983, edition 1 / Page 13
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Full-length 'A Star is Born' thrills movie buffs Friday December 9, 1983The Dailv Tar Heel13 By JEFF GROVE A it.i Editor This is the year of old movies. Four films by Alfred Hitchcock which had long been out of circulation have been screened to crowds of ecstatic movie buffs. But an even bigger event for film fans comes with the re release of George Cuckor's 1954 classic A Star Is Born, This is not the same A Star Is Born, however, that makes the rounds on late-night television and in revival houses. The picture as Cuckor made it ran 181 minutes, and the film received glowing reviews. But theater man agers complained to the Warner Bros, studio that they were losing money because they could only run the film twice a day. So the studio cut the picture over Cuckor's protests to 154 minutes. This truncated ver sion, which Cuckor could never bear to watch, is what audiences have seen for 29 years. Review Thanks to the diligent work of film preservationist Ron Haver (see related story this page), almost all of the film has been recovered and pieced together. Film fans who always loved the film will love it even more now, and cynical detractors will discover that the plot and character motivations they've always missed are now there. The film finally can be judged in its entirety for what it is a thrilling but somewhat flawed backstage musical. The story, originally filmed in 1937 and remade in 1976, is, of course, trite: a star, on the way down in his career, meets and molds a star on her way to the top, and their meeting leads to a marriage doomed by his self destructive urges. The telling of the story, not its con tent, makes it interesting. This time out, the lead roles of Norman Maine and Esther Blodgett were taken by James Mason and Judy Garland. A Star Is Born was Garland's first film in four years. MGM had fired her for unreliability that resulted from her real and imagined nervous conditions. After a di vorce and a suicide attempt, she married impresario Sid Luft, who produced the film and nursed Garland through its production. It is fortunate that he did, for this is Garland's best screen work aside from Judgment at Nuremburg. Her emotional scenes are admirably re strained and lack the hysterics to which she resorted so often in her early films. Mason is every bit her equal. Though he does not have as much dialogue to contend with as Garland, Mason is called on to provide much more in the way of facial ex pressions. A master of movement, he changes the whole mood of some scenes with the tiniest gesture. His ordeal in a night court sequence is absolutely harrowing. . There are fine supporting performances, too, from Charles Bickford as studio exec Oliver Niles, Jack Car son as Libby, the nasty studio P.R. man, and Tom Noonan as Esther's old pal Danny McGuire. If Moss Hart's script for this adaptation of the story is not as caustic in its observation of the Hollywood scene as the 1937 original, which included the acid contribu tions of Dorothy Parker, it gains in having more in- but a human .with many faults. Making Libby openly hostile to Norman adds sorely needed conflict to the film. And Esther's longing for stardom is brilliantly out lined in a scene with Danny which, inexplicably was among the footage deleted in 1954. The musical score, too, is a joy. Ira Gershwin's talents as a lyricist are well-known. Composer Harold Arlen is perhaps a lesser-known name, but his songs are widely popular. He contributed songs to the film version of Cabin in the Sky and wrote scores for many Broadway musicals. But writing for Judy Garland was nothing new to him; 15 years before A Star Is Born he composed the Oscar-winning score for The Wizard of Oz. The songs for A Star Is Born glitter with his characteristic beauty of melody, with the rousing "Lose That Long Face" and the haunting torch song "The Man That Got Away" both brilliantly sung by Garland leading the way, despite the fact that the studio found them "expendable." The CinemaScope photography adds much to the film's composition, and Cuckor's direction is among his finest work. The story is carefully, intricately worked out a feeling that the cut version of the film robbed. Film buffs owe a great deal of gratitude to all the forces who made the film's restoration possible. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The American Film Institute, Warner Bros, and Eastman Kodak have done a service in restoring the greatness of one of America's film treasures. Projectionist restored 1954 Cuckor classic By JEFF GROVE Arts Editor It was a classic case of a Hollywood studio's greed. Simply for reasons of pro fit, Warner Bros, in 1954 unceremonious ly excised 27 minutes of George Cuckor's remake of the 1937 classic A Star Is Born. Cuckor and star Judy Garland refused to view the cut version, claiming that it destroyed the artistic heart of the film. Matters might have rested there with those 27 minutes lost forever if Ron Haver, a projectionist at the American Film Institute, had not been screening ail of "Cuckor's films in 1971 to help in the writing of a biography of the director. Haver had seen the film in its early re lease, and although the film . enchanted him, he was disappointed by the deletion of crucial dramatic and musical scenes he had read about. He thought the time was right to dig up the complete film, but neither Cuckor nor Warners had a com plete print. Two years later, while in charge of a Cuckor retrospective, Haver compiled a brochure to accompany A Star Is Born, explaining through printed dialogue and still photographs exactly what had been cut from the film. A detective story began there, for the brochure interested Warners in finding and restoring the missing segments. Haver played Sherlock Holmes in the story. He chronicled his sexreh for the missing footage in a recent article in American Film. "In late spring 1982, 1 began my search on the East Coast at the old, meticulously maintained Vitagraph storage facilities in Brooklyn, owned-by Warners since the late '20s," Haver wrote. Finding nothing useful, he headed for Hollywood, where a friend had turned up the complete 181-minute soundtrack but no footage. Left in the hands of an old studio editor, Haver asked what would have been done with the deleted portions of WHAM AiNRHMM E TK 1 1 B3BSS" THE CflROUHfl THEATRE I I N C- Premiere 0 ,he claimed I I SaSkLT i M F 7:30 pm. Sat. 4.30 & 8 pm ,z a i rij a . vun. t . avis, r.w i:I:fHTfttJ:cji HIM 3 .simqess icon gSTs? novocm GIVE TO THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY. THE Daily Crossword by Nancy Mc Carthy 1 5 9 14 ACROSS Worry Sheriff Dillon Bombard Kind of weed 15 Wings 16 Hair raising 17 von Bismarck 18 Membrane 19 Inspected, to a yegg 20 Groundhog 22 Palestra, for one 23 Bide 24 Desire 26 Fine fabrics 29 Meritori ously 33 Progeny of a sort 34 Cries derisively 35 juvante 36 Peel 37 Periphras tic 38 Puny 39 Unit 40 Horseshoe pieces 41 With sweet ness, in music 42 Pillages 44 Untied 45 Merely 46 Certain speed unit Yesterday's Puzzle Solved: g TTr oTTsTtTe i s n ArTA c e 1I1C.UIJ U 0JL.b.LA 0 JL S.JL C R a xi JJ LBjLIJ lMF L E E 3 R E MlJN 0 DJ 0 N T HE R OlAjD ffon MAf t c 'owp aTpTe" ETL I axe ZisTh riT o lJa e. rToLj c O N K TY sti e" sje " Rieflwfsl IN E A TP T E P ITfTf M Li Zl L UG t o mTjs. 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Am. 50 Supplies for fire places 55 Idolize 56 Foul smelling 57 Romantic isle 58 Removes 59 French river 60 Hero 61 Horse sound 62 Producer 63 Transmitted DOWN 1 Deliberate 2 Dorothy's dog 3 Outside: pref. 4 Clarinet or oboe 5 Singer Johnny 6 Island Eskimo 7 Soapstone 8 Trees for 9 Cutting lines 10 Home, poet ically 11 Scottish- 129B3 Irish 12 Legal claim 13 Mother of Castor 21 Malacca 25 Chi-chr 26 Young fish 27 True up 28 Musal sounds 29 Labors 30 Creative thoughts 31 Depart 32 Joined, as oxen 34 Tinseltown 37 Ululate 38 Large wader 40 Struggle for superi ority 41 Puree 43 Needier 44 Way up or down 46 City in Idaho 47 Bounders 48 Mid-east gulf 49 Philippine knife 51 Medley 52 Stow cargo 53 N.C. col lege 54 Delta stuff "l p p R 15 p p p F T 9 110 111 112 113 i "20 TT" T2 IT" " ' 17" 25 "" - 26 1 27 '128 29" 30 31 1 32 33 34 35 36 "" sT" f" saT" 39 ""T " TT NMM MMHM MMMM IMMM MMM- MHMM WMB fftyJfr MMHW MMM MMW MMHM MMMH 42 43 i rmmer mwm. mm mmmmam immmmm nmmmm . 46 ' -ppp pp, M 56 57 58 59 60 T2 "El 1983 Tribune Company Syndicate, Inc. All Rights Reserved 12983 the film. " 'In those days he (the editor) said, 'we'd keep it for six months, then junk it. Was it possible that some of it might not have been junked? 'Possible, but not likely.' " But the editor let Haver pick through old cans of A Star Is Bom material anyway. "I wound through the film," Haver wrote, "squinting at the 35mm im ages, looking for something that was familiar to me from the stills of the miss ing sequences." Suddenly, Haver realized he was staring at a scene of Judy Garland singing "Here's What I'm Here For," followed by a scene of James Mason pro posing marriage to her. Both were sup posed to have been deleted from the film. "I must have let out a loud yelp," Haver wrote, "because (the editor) came running back into the office to see if something had happened to me." From the editing vaults the trail led to the studio's stock footage library, where im portant scenes from early in the film were recovered in whole or in part. Among the studio's negatives in storage he recovered a sequence featuring the large production number "Lose That Long Face." In all, Haver recovered 20 minutes of usable film. Sepia-tinted stills were care fully blended in for the remaining seven minutes, for which there existed sound but no pictures. The only disappointment came when Cuckor died the day before he was to view test footage involving the inserted stills- But Haver pressed on, seeing his work as a tribute to Cuckor. The film pre miered in New York in its full-length ver sion on July 7, and Haver said he was proud of himself and his colleagues for helping to restore the film to what he call ed "the overwhelming theatrical ex perience that it will once again prove to be." FINAL: G f?C on selected athletic shoes for merf & women by famous makers such as Adidas, Brooks, Nike, and others. ; ALSO: $3.00 OFF al! running shorts AH T-Shirts $2.99 Sales ends Dec. 17, 1983 marchandise limited to stock on hand Ooen weeknites til 8 pm , " 942-1078; University Square (next to dranyilie Towers) ,133 W. Frankltr V CHARMED WEEK! mm CSlTY ui Late Shows Fit, Sat. 1t:30 Peter O'Toole THE STUNT MAN John Waters DESPERATE LIVING P WOODY ALLEN 9v (G m rm MUST END THURSDAY TAMRfl I ACADEMY AWARD WINNER I rtll UUl BEST ANIMATED SHORT 3:15 5:15 7:15 9:15 BEST ANIMATEO SHORT A VARSITY EXCLUSIVE YOU'RE UNLIKELY TO SEE A MORE ENTERTAIN- ING, SUSPENSFUL, ROMANTIC, WITTY, INVENTIVE, AND TECHNICALLY BRILLIANT FILM THIS YEAR OR ANY YEAR!" THE FILM JOURNAL 1 JAMES STEWART GRACE KELLY in ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S WEAR WJNDUW W r BRAND NEW 35mm TECHNICOLOR PRINT rpr , Exclusive Area Engagement ' i 3:00 5:00 7fl0 9:05 L l THMTHI Undergraduate Library Hours Saturday, (Dec. 10) 9 a.m. - 2 a.m. Sunday, (Dec. 11).;. 10 a.m. - ALL NIGHT Monday - Thursday (Dec. 12-15) 24 HOURS Friday (Dec. 16). Close at 2 a.m. Saturday (Dec. 17). ..... . 9 a.m. - 2 a.m. Sunday (Dec. 18) 10 a.m. -2 a.m. Monday - Tuesday (Dec. 19-20) .' 7 a.m. - 2 a.m. Wednesday (Dec. 21) 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY Thursday (Dec. 22). 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. Friday - Tuesday (Dec. 23 - 27), Christmas Hobday CLOSED Wednesday - Friday (Dec. 28 - 30) 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Saturday - Monday (Dec. 31 - Jan. 2), New Year's Holiday. CLOSED Tuesday - Friday (Jan. 3-6) 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 7) 9 a.m. -1 p.m. Sunday CLOSED Monday - Tuesday (Jan. 9-10), Registration 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Wednesday (Jan. 11).' Classes begin RESUME REGULAR SCHEDULE 007 Never Say Never Again 7:00 9:20 Last Week NCNBPLA. ROSEMAR 967-8284 ONE WEEK "Educating Rita" 7:00 9:15 smi ,vn n 7: 00 fcf'fiflWfilg 9: WCHL LATE SHOWS FRI. & SAT. 12:00 Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" Mel Gibson "The Road Warrior S2.00 HELD OVER! KtNTEK ill Vftll II LATE SHOWS FRI. & SAT. 11:30 FIRST TIME EVER IN KINTEK STEREO . RICHARD RUSH . PETER 0100LE STEVE RAILSBACK BARBARA HERSHEY Dear Filmgoers, This is one of the great films of the 80's, presented in 35mm and, for the first time, in our superb Kintek Stereo bringing to life Dominic Frontiere's fine music score. Television can't come close to conveying the excitement you'll experience when you join us for Richard Rush's Knockout film, THE STUNT MAN. Jim Steele. Manager Varsity Theatres - ' n M--HII EVEN WILDER THAN PINK FLAMINGOS! JOHN WATtKS r s j . , It isn't very pretty. u UUJJJJ (W) March of Dimes YL BBBSBIRTH DEFECTS KXJNOATIONBPBBH THIS SPACE CONTRIBUTED BY THE PUBLISHER GIVE DANCE FOR CHRISTMAS! with the Triangle Dance Guild h ' 4 Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carol Monday, January 16 idiLyiheat 9 Saturday, February 11 PILOBOLVS Thursday, March 1 Hire:;,: Hubbard Street Sunday, April 1
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Dec. 9, 1983, edition 1
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