Love Letters to Old Hollywood

For the past twenty minutes, I've been bawling my eyes out. I've seen 1954's A Star is Born a handful of times, but the ending never fails to tear me to pieces. Every time, I ask the screen "Please, can everything just work out this go-around?" and every time it doesn't happen. The sacrifice of James Mason's Norman Maine and the pain of Judy Garland's Esther Blodgett have been imprinted on my brain ever since my first viewing of the film almost a decade ago, yet each time I see it again, the heartbreak and the tears come as if I've never seen it before.  A Star is Born has one of the richest and most complex production histories. That statement applies to both the 1954 film and the material in general (which we will once again see on the big screen next year !). I don't want to talk about that, though. What I want to discuss is the beautiful, heart-stopping performance of Ms. Judy Garland. With the role of Esther, Judy was able to s...

Can you imagine a more creative and fun group of people than the nightclub act The Revuers? In the 1940's, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, Judy Holliday, and a few others came together in New York, working their way from performing in Greenwich Village to life-altering, history-changing success on Broadway. Comden and Green, along with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins, crafted the groundbreaking show On the Town . Judy Holliday found stardom with Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday , a stage hit that earned her an Oscar for its film adaptation. Comden, Green, and Holliday forged amazing careers in Hollywood, too, but in 1956 when Holliday became depressed about her divorce from David Oppenheim after ten years of marriage, Comden and Green gave their friend a gift: Bells are Ringing . A lovely musical comedy constructed around the inimitable talents of its star, Bells are Ringing afforded Holliday the opportunity to get away from the increasingly typecast roles her film care...