Believing his new contract player to be too overweight, Mayer had studio doctors prescribe Garland Benzedrine combined with a phenobarbital to suppress her appetite while doubling her energy. The baggage Garland brought to the project was dubbed in Luft and Vance’s book as “a fragile constitution, dependency on prescription medication, habits of lateness and volatility, and unmanaged manic depression.” How poignant that the very symptoms contributing to the multiple delays that plagued Cukor’s film stemmed directly from a drug regiment enforced by MGM head Louis B. Just as the romance that blossomed between Lester and Maine was doomed for tragedy due to addiction, so was Garland’s marriage to Sid, as he gave into his compulsion for gambling. Her transformation from Blodgett to her studio-assigned persona as Vicki Lester is not all that far removed from Garland’s own transition to celebrity, when she cast off the less-appealing name of Francis Gumm (vaudeville star George Jessel joked that it sounded like “Glum”). Garland plays Esther Blodgett, a singer unaware of her star power until she is discovered by Norman Maine ( James Mason), a well-known film actor with an unslakable thirst for alcohol. Perhaps that's the price they pay for being originals.”Īccording to the illuminating book released last fall, A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and the Film that Got Away, coauthored by Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft, along with Jeffrey Vance, the actress connected deeply to the script because of her own unresolved relationship with her father, who died when she was a teenager, as well as the father figure she found in her husband, Sid Luft, who produced the film. Most great performers are not very happy and well adjusted. During a Q&A at the 1967 Chicago International Film Festival, attended by Roger Ebert, Cukor noted, “People who aren't complicated in real life come through as pretty bland on the screen. The pangs of longing that characterize her two most memorable numbers in cinema, “Over the Rainbow” and “The Man That Got Away,” mirror the loss that she endured throughout her life. Yet what now stands as the crowning achievement of Garland’s legacy ironically marked the end of her career as a marquee name in Hollywood.
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Garland and Gaga were both 32 when their respective “Star Is Born” films received an October release in theaters, and the actresses each sought to have the coveted titular role launch-or in Garland’s case, relaunch-their career as a major movie star.
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