Another A Star is Born ??
Apparently Hollywood can’t get enough of this subject matter. One star going up, one star declining. This time around the stars are Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. Cooper also directs.
The first version was 1937 starring Fredric March and Janet Gaynor. Supposedly, that was a rewrite of What Price Hollywood, a Constance Bennett film of the early thirties (1932 to be exact). But in that one, the girl becomes a star and her mentor (but not her husband), a film director played by Lowell Sherman, falls into alcoholism.
Interestingly, the director of What Price Hollywood? — George Cukor — also directed the premier A Star Is Born remake covered below.
That first remake was in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason. It still stands as the best of the series. Oh, The Man That Got Away!
Then in 1976 Barbara Streisand updated it again and starred in it opposite Kris Kristofferson. Not that good, but the film did generate the Oscar winning song, ‘Evergreen.’
And now the fourth try, or is it the fifth?
Through the years the genesis for the tale has been attributed to the relationships of silent star Colleen Moore and one of her four husbands, and to Barbara Stanwyck and her first husband Frank Fay. But, of course, as we all know, there are hundreds of similar stories in tinseltown.
I think someone should make a movie with the title-
A STAR IS RE-BORN
Again, it’s all subjective and a matter of personal taste… I think both the 1937 and 1954 versions are equally good, and should be re-mastered and re-packaged into one special DVD set.
The 1976 version well, the least said about that one the better.
Very rarely does a re-make surpass the original, but it did with Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON.
You have a very, very long list of very bad re-makes – PSYCHO is a classic example… As is PLANET OF THE APES, THE LADYKILLERS, CARRIE, and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to name just a few.
Producer/director Howard Hawks remade his own RIO BRAVO twice, each time getting worse. Of course he changed the titles, which makes it a little bit harder for most people to recognize and compare to.
As for the upcoming Ben Cooper/Lady Gaga version… These two “trending now stars” let’s just say they’re not my cup of tea in anything they appear in.
As Joe & Frank have already said – “there are hundreds of similar stories in tinseltown.”
Only in real life, there are millions of similar A STAR IS BORN stories, whereby one spouses career in whatever it is, is going up; and the other’s is going down. It’s what breaks up a good many marriages and results in a very un-HOLLYWOOD ending!
It’s Bradley Cooper, not Ben.
I actually like the 1937 version the best. Although I know I’m in the minority on that.