Tag Archives: A Star is Born (Cukor)

JACQUELINE BISSET AND TRUFFAUT

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On the list of the best movies about making movies – Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful, Cukor’s A Star is Born, Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore, Fellini’s 8½ –  François Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT invariably lands near the top.

(The title refers to the practice of shooting a night scene during daylight hours, using a blue filter to screen out the brightness.)

This week, at Laemmle’s 45th anniversary screening of the film, Jacqueline Bisset will talk about her work with Truffaut on the picture.

 

DAY FOR NIGHT, Thursday, May 10, at 7:30 pm.

LAEMMLE ROYAL, 11523 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

laemmle.com/film

Below: Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jacqueline Bisset in Day for Night. Image credit: Warner Bros.

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RAINBOW’S END

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A STAR IS BORN (1954, directed by George Cukor)—a trenchant film noir, a Technicolor/CinemaScope extravaganza, and Judy Garland’s last great musical—is a Hollywood story that Hollywood has told many times: a great but aging male star on his way down meets a green-but-talented actress (or singer) who becomes his protégé, and whose fame soon surpasses his.*

Despite the energy and brilliance of her performance, by the mid-1950s Garland was on a steep downward slide herself. Three years before A STAR IS BORN went into production at Warner Bros., she was fired for general unreliability by the studio (MGM) that was instrumental in creating and encouraging her prescription-drug habit. In 1969, Garland was found dead in a London flat, age 47.

A STAR IS BORN

Tuesday, August 29, at 1 pm.

Bing Theater, LACMA

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

* See What Price Hollywood? (1932, directed by George Cukor) for the first version.

From top: Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away” in A Star is Born; Gavin Lambert’s On Cukor, with a cover photograph of Cukor directing Garland in A Star is Born; Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Lauren Bacall at the Pantages Theater premiere of A Star is Born, Hollywood, September 29, 1954.