Transcript and Bulletin.
Aashiqui 2 is the 2013 Bollywood version of A
Star is Born. With subtitles in English, the musical is a lovely remake. It stars
exceptionally handsome Aditya Roy Kapur - and the even more beautiful Shraddha
Kapoor. The music is enchanting, and both conventional Bollywood cinematography
and delightful chemistry between the two actors received much critical praise
upon its release. Translated to the English "love makes one live,"
the Hindi Indian film matches the 1976 musical closely – it is the intense and
tragic story of two musicians, Rahul Jaykar (or R.J.) and Aarohi Keshav Shirke.
When Bradley
Cooper took over the project as director, he hoped his fresh version of A Star
is Born - of rising and descending stars – would be a box office success.
Although Clint Eastwood had envisioned American songwriter and singer Beyoncé
as the leading lady of the next remake, it was upon listening to pop singer
Lady Gaga at a benefit concert that Cooper knew that he had found his star in Stefani
Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Lady Gaga’s real name.
The 2018
version of A Star is Born won’t disappoint those who will fall in love with the
soundtrack of 17 original songs or music. Viewers won’t be turned away by the
close-ups of either character - Jackson Maine (Cooper) or Abby (Lady Gaga.) For
those of us who loved any of the A Star is Born versions, this is as good as
the first time.
The
foundation for all the versions of A Star is Born was laid in 1932 with the
film What Price Hollywood, based on a novel by journalist Adela Rogers St.
Johns. St. Johns had been detailing Hollywood's legends for several decades,
including the famous meteoric rises and painful, slow descents of its stars.
Her exclusive look fuses details of the relationship of two Tinsel town notorieties
(silent superstar Colleen Moore and alcoholic producer, John McCormick) and the
tragedy of self-destruction of Hollywood producer Tom Forman. (Forman killed
himself the night before his next film was set to begin production in November
1926.) Others claim that the film was based on the turbulent relationship of
actors Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay, whose marriage slipped apart as
Stanwyck’s career rose and Fay’s declined, due in most part to Fay's
alcoholism.
Constance
Bennett and Lowell Sherman star in this version, a black-and-white film
directed by George Cukor and co-produced by David O. Selznick. Anyone who has
seen any version of A Star is Born will acknowledge the story – an aspiring
actress meets the man (in this version a director) who can open doors for
her. The starlet (Mary Evans) rockets to
the top, winning an Academy Award; the drunk (Max Carey) disrupts her
acceptance speech, and eventually commits suicide.
Several
years after What Price Hollywood was released, producer Selznick approached director
Cukor and asked him to direct another version – the story that is now
considered the original A Star is Born. Cukor speculated it would be seen as a
plagiarized effort and stayed away. (Interestingly, no legal action was ever
taken by the studio.)
This
1937 film, A Star is Born, was released in marvelous Technicolor and starred
Janet Gaynor and Frederick March. A North Dakota farm girl is convinced by her
grandmother to leave for Hollywood and the grandmother funds her dream. Girl
meets guy with connections; girl shows talent; girl rises to the top. Guy then
self-destructs, and in this version, and every other one, commits suicide.
In 1954,
Cukor finally agreed to direct the first remake of the 1937 musical version in
which Judy Garland and James Mason starred.
Garland was back from a short retirement and was conveniently married to
the film’s producer Sidney Luft. Controversy plagued production - Garland was
typically difficult – it was just fifteen years before her suicide in
1969. Before its final release, 30
minutes of the film were cut to make it shorter so that more audiences could
view it. The actual film was tragically
destroyed when it was melted down for its silver content and was forever lost.
A director’s cut version available on DVD includes the audio of the cut scenes
while the viewer gazes upon unconvincing studio stills.
Garland
and many others believed she would undoubtedly win the Academy Award for A Star
is Born. The night of the Oscars, Garland was in the hospital having given
birth to her son, Joseph Luft, and film crews were at her bedside for her acceptance
speech. In the end, Garland lost to Grace Kelly (The Country Girl). The
industry was shocked, and Groucho Marx called it the “biggest robbery since
Brinks’.”
In her
book, A Star is Born: Judy Garland and the Film That Got Away (September 2018),
Judy Garland’s sixty-six-year-old daughter Lorna Luft explains that A Star is
Born mimics much of the dark side of Garland’s life and the tumult of stardom
and Hollywood. Luft describes the tragic loss - of both the film destroyed and
of the award that Garland expected. (Although honored for Wizard of Oz, and
nominated twice for A Star is Born and the Judgment at Nuremberg, she never won
an Oscar.)
Two
decades later, another husband-producer cast his wife in A Star is Born – this
time a rock musical. In Jon Peter’s film, Streisand is the aspiring singer and
Kris Kristofferson as the musician who discovers her. Kristofferson, as John
Norman Howard, is just as risky and rowdy as his alcoholic predecessors played
by Frederick March and James Mason. Notably, this Esther is just as talented
and quirky as Gaynor and Garland. In the 1976 film, Streisand wins a Grammy –
not an Oscar - but Johnny still shows up to ruin the night. He, too, eventually
kills himself, this time in a risky car accident after traveling through the
desert at 160 miles an hour.
Shortly
before the 1954 version of A Star is Born begins AND ends, Norman Maine (James
Mason) asks to take one more look at the love of his life, Esther Blodgett
(Judy Garland.) From Frederick March to Bradley Cooper, “I just want to have
one more look at you,” is like a ribbon that weaves through most, if not all,
of this famous film story for nearly the past century.
Take one
more look at A Star is Born. Copies of each of the past versions of A Star is
Born (including What Price Hollywood) are available through the Minuteman
Library Network catalog, as well as Lorna Luft’s biographical story of her
mother.
