A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (48 page)

In preparing the Ira Gershwin evening with Doug Edwards, I brought
the idea up to him-but again it was rejected as too expensive and cumbersome. In the course of our conversations, however, I told him of my
conviction that somewhere out at the studio the missing footage was just
sitting in some vault or mismarked can, waiting for someone to dig it out. Over the years, first at the AFI and then at the museum, I had been out
to the Warner Bros. facility in Burbank many times to pick up and deliver film, and I had seen the way films were shipped back and forth, in
and out of the studio, and how many different people handled the prints.
Due to the many changes of studio administration and ownership, the
films were constantly being shifted from vault to vault, and there were
times when nobody knew exactly where a print or negative could be
found. In the case of A Star Is Born, I was convinced that the missing
sequences were somewhere out there in one of these numerous storage
facilities. But I knew it would require a careful vault-by-vault, can-by-can
inspection before they could be found, and the job would have to be done
by someone who knew what to look for. This could not be managed
without the permission and cooperation of the highest levels of Warner
Bros., and there just wasn't enough time to organize this before the
Gershwin evening. But Doug thought that we should pursue this later,
through the Academy.

Immediately after the tribute to Gershwin (which, unfortunately, he was
too ill to attend), Doug, Fay and Michael Kanin, and I went out to
celebrate. Fay brought up the subject of the missing sequences in A Star
Is Born and remarked how wonderful it would be if a full-length print of
the picture could be found. She and Michael had seen the film in its original
form and had been shocked to hear that it later had been so heavily cut.
Both of them had a long and close relationship with George Cukor. Michael had produced one of Cukor's best films, A Double Life, which had
won an Academy Award for Ronald Colman and had marked the film
debut of not only Shelley Winters but Fay Kanin, who had a small part
in it; thirty-two years later, George cast Fay in a role in his last film, Rich
and Famous. Doug and I immediately explained our hope that the missing
footage might indeed be found, if a complete and thorough search of all
the film storage facilities of Warner Bros. was made on both coasts, and
especially at the studio. Our enthusiastic conviction evidently piqued Fay's
interest, for she decided to call Robert Daly, the chairman of the board of
Warner Bros., explaining what we wanted to do and why, and asking
whether Warners would put its corporate efforts behind this project. We
all wanted to restore the film; but Fay, as a member of the National
Committee for Film Preservation, was aware of how a project such as this
could vividly illustrate the necessity not only of film preservation but also
of film restoration. Kevin Brownlow's recent reconstruction of Abel Gance's Napoleon had demonstrated both the ability of this kind of project
to be culturally valuable and the extent to which it could capture the
public's imagination in a way that no amount of proselytizing could.

Literally millions of feet of irreplaceable film are moldering in vaults
around the country because there is not enough money to copy them. Some
early color films no longer have negatives, just prints, which must be copied
accurately and expensively. Time and a shortage of money are the twin
perils here: both have to be made highly visible so that funds can be raised
to do what's needed with all possible speed and efficiency. A Star Is Born
seemed a likely candidate for this: it was famous, it featured some of the
best work of some of the finest talents of the time, and it was an outstanding
example of the artistic and technical standards of the art and industry that
are generically known as Hollywood. It would also point out the fact that
film preservation is not simply a matter of copying silent film, as many
people seem to think; it is also dealing with the infinitely more complex
problems of preserving and reconstituting both color and sound films. A
Star Is Born was less than thirty years old, but already questions had been
raised about the stability of its color negative; existing prints were on the
old Eastmancolor release stock, which has an unfortunate tendency to fade.
So if the film could be reconstructed as closely as possible to its original
form, it would be a clear illustration of the problems and rewards of the
craft of film preservation.

Fay explained all this in her letter to Bob Daly, and back came permission to go through the company's film storage facilities to see what could
be found. We decided not to say anything to Cukor just yet so as not to
get his hopes up.

Earl A. ("Rusty") Powell III, the director of the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, encouraged me to take as much time as needed to conduct
this search properly. The next week I was to be in New York City on
museum business, and I began the hunt at the very beginnings of the
American motion picture-the old Vitagraph film storage facilities out in
Brooklyn, owned by Warners since the late 1920s. Built fortresslike sometime in the teens, the films here are meticulously organized and antiseptically maintained. I found nothing useful, though, and the same was true
at the laboratories in midtown Manhattan that had manufactured prints:
the only material they had was the cut final negative, both 16mm and
35mm.

Back in Los Angeles, my first stop was the Technicolor labs in Universal City, where I was aided by Bob Schulte, who went through A Star Is Born 's
printing history with me. Technicolor had made the first set of prints for
the full-length road-show version back in 1954. According to their September 1954 records, they printed 150 four-track stereo prints on Eastmancolor
stock for the first runs. Then no more work was done until mid-October,
when an order came through to cut the master negative. This was done on
October 10. For the revised A Star Is Bom, reels 3A and 3B were shortened
and combined to form a new reel known as 3AB. Cuts were also made in
reels 4A, 5A, 6B, 9A, and 9B. The excised material-the "trims and
deletions," as the order phrased it-were put in cans, numbered 430
through 44o, and shipped back to the studio. Thereafter, the print orders
called for another 150 optical prints of the short version made by the
dye-transfer process, for second-run usage. From this shortened master
negative were made all the subsequent printing materials for 16mm and
foreign 35mm use. So much for a full-length version being printed overseas.

The next step was trying to find out what had happened to the 150
full-length, four-track prints. According to the studio files at USC and the
Warner Bros. distribution records now at Princeton University, orders went
out from the editorial department to all film exchanges across the country,
instructing them how to cut the prints and to send the excised material
back to the studio. At this point, we thought it was worth a try to contact
people who had worked in the film exchanges, to see if possibly some
zealous editor/inspector had cut it and kept it. The Academy placed ads
in daily and weekly Variety and the Hollywood Reporter; the response,
while gratifying in numbers, turned up nothing of interest.

And then, of course, there were the film collectors. If you love movies
and you live in Hollywood, eventually you will have some contact with
that strange, obsessive group of film fanatics whose passions are the possession of movies-the rarer and more eclectic, the better. Some do it for
love; some do it for money; some do it for pride of ownership; and some
do it for no reason that they can articulate. In fact, most film collectors
will not talk of their hobby, their mania. They are secretive, and with
good reason: they could be, and have been, prosecuted for possession of
stolen property, since the only way they could gain most films was to buy
stolen merchandise or steal the films themselves. For years, film collectors, whom the industry despised as a group of eccentrics, did what the
studios and other corporations failed to do: saved, preserved, and otherwise cared for the priceless relics of our so-called cultural heritage. When big money moved into the area of old film in the way of television sales,
then the studios and other copyright owners set loose the minions of Jack
Valenti and the Motion Picture Association of America, who contacted
the FBI, which began a series of confiscations and prosecutions that terrified and intimidated illegal collectors. So it was no wonder that the Academy's ads in the trade papers were greeted with a wall of silence from the
film-collecting community. It is a community, albeit a tiny and tightly
knit, paranoid one, and its members are careful to let few outsiders be
aware of their secrets. However, word does get out. In the case of A Star
Is Born, there were rumors: that a collector in the Chicago area had the
footage; that Peter Sellers had a complete i 6mm print. Regarding the
latter rumor, Liza Minnelli is reputed to have joked that the only reason
she dated Sellers was in the hope that he would show her the movie. Her
hope was unfulfilled.

Her sister, Lorna Luft, told of an encounter with one of these movie
mysterians, who evidently wrote her a note regarding A Star Is Born, telling
her to call a certain number at a certain hour. The conversation, according
to Ms. Luft, was cryptic: "I've got what you want." "You have? Can I see
it?" "Call tomorrow-same time."

The next night: "I really would like to see what you have." "All right,
come to a phone booth at the corner of Pico and Sepulveda at ten p.m.
tomorrow night, and wait for further instructions." She went to the phone
booth, armed with champagne, caviar, and money, just in case it might be
needed. The phone rang-instructions were given as to how to find a
certain house. Her excitement rose; the house was found; the door was
opened; and a furtive gentleman of indeterminate age whisked her into a
chair. The lights went down, and onto the screen came a black-and-white
print of Good News.

My own experience with tracking down leads of this sort on A Star Is
Born dates back to 1970 when I was a projectionist at the AFI. A film
historian who frequented the Greystone Mansion headquarters of the Institute took me aside one day and said he knew the mysterious collector in
the Chicago area who had the material I was looking for. He hadn't seen
it personally, but the collector was a respectable type who seldom claimed
to have something unless he did. All he wanted in exchange for the footage
was a 35mm Technicolor print of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the 1938
adventure classic starring Errol Flynn. Even though Warner Bros. had
produced the film, it no longer owned it, having sold all its pre-1948 movies to United Artists in the mid-195os. However, I put in a call to Rudi Fehr,
then the vice-president in charge of postproduction at Warners. Rudi never
could understand all the fuss about the missing footage of A Star Is Born;
he thought it was a better film in the shorter version. But he was fond of
Cukor, and he agreed to try to obtain a print of Robin Hood from United
Artists. But the collector upped the ante: now he wanted The Private Lives
of Elizabeth and Essex, also in Technicolor. I told Rudi, who said he would
see what he could do. The message was then relayed to the collector, and
that was the last anyone heard. I inquired several times about the status
of the deal, and all my contact would ever say was that he was waiting to
hear from the collector, whom he described as "weird." Weird indeed!

The ad in the trades did prompt a provocative telephone call. A local
revival-house owner, a Star Is Born fanatic, called to tell me that he knew
of a collector who had the footage. When I expressed my doubt, based on
previous experience, he assured me that he had seen it: it was the "Lose
That Long Face" number! The exhibitor was not the type to invent stories
like this, so I was intrigued. But Mr. Exhibitor could not and would not
tell me who the elusive gentleman was, having been sworn to secrecy. I
asked him to try to convince his friend that he would be doing a great
service if he would make the footage available to us to copy. Mr. Exhibitor
said he would try. My hopes went up a bit-not much, but a bit. Several
days later, Mr. Exhibitor called back to tell me that Mr. Elusive Collector
had had a fit when told that I knew of the footage; he denied everything
and threw the exhibitor out of his house. My slight hope was dashed, and
I began concentrating on real possibilities.

Everything seemed to point to the studio. If the material wasn't there,
then it was pretty certain not to exist. The Burbank Studios are concentrated
next to the usually nonexistent Los Angeles River, across from Forest Lawn
and sandwiched in between Universal to the west and Disney to the east. As
a filmmaking facility, it teems with activity; as a Hollywood haunted house,
its streets and stages are rife with the ghosts of people and films: Warner,
Wallis, Flynn, Davis, Bogart, Cagney, Robinson, Steiner, Korngold, Tiom-
kin. Everywhere you turn there is some reminder of the studio's history:
walking up a flight of stairs, you pass a wall filled with dusty blueprints for sets
and your eye is caught by the titles Casablanca or A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Dozens of other familiar sights leap out at you, including the
automobile called the General Lee from the television series "The Dukes of
Hazzard," parked incongruously in the famous New York street.

You enter the studio from, appropriately enough, Hollywood Way,
which leads to the editorial departments and film library, all under the calm
but firm control of Fred Talmage, successor to Rudi Fehr as vice-president
in charge of postproduction. This area is the nerve center for everything
that happens to a picture after it comes off the stages. Here are the true
veterans of the movie business: Fred Talmage started with Warners in
1955; Ralph Martin, Fred's assistant, has been there almost as long; Frank
Murphy, one of the oldest editors in terms of service, has been putting films
together since 1959; Don Adler has been film vault supervisor since 196o.
But the longevity champ of the entire studio is probably Lillian Harr
Wilson, the sweet-tempered and efficient head of the film library. She's
been with the studio for thirty-eight years, and in fact did the dialogue
transcript for A Star Is Born-a script in dialogue form only. Warners was
one of the rare studios that did not make detailed "cutting continuities,"
a shot-by-shot description of each scene in a film, broken down into angles,
movement, and footage measurements-something that helps an editor
replace exactly any damaged footage or to time a given sequence precisely
down to the frame just by reading the footage numbers. These are invaluable aids, and I was somewhat taken aback to find that Warners didn't
make them. "Jack L. never wanted us to spend the time or the money to
do those," explained Lillian ruefully. "The labs made footage-count scripts,
and he thought those were enough."