The story for A Star Is Born derived from 1932's What Price Hollywood?, in which Constance Bennett stars as a young actress who achieves stardom with the help of once-great director Maximillan Carey (Lowell Sherman). When his alcoholism starts to threaten her career, he kills himself. The film was directed by George Cukor and produced at RKO under David O. Selznick.

When Selznick decided to attempt a new version of the story for his own production company in 1937, he gave Cukor first shot at directing it, but the director turned him down, feeling he had nothing to add to the story. William Wellman, who also collaborated on the story, directed the film. For this version the young actress (Janet Gaynor) was helped by a fading star (Fredric March) who married her before realizing that his alcoholism was ruining her career and personal life.

Hollywood legend has suggested several models for the character of Norman Maine. Some claim the story was inspired by John Gilbert's marriage to stage actress Ina Claire, who enjoyed a spurt of popularity in the early days of talking pictures just as his career was sinking. Others have suggested that Maine was modeled on John Barrymore. The most likely candidate, however, is film director Marshall "Mickey" Neilan, whose promising career was destroyed by drinking and other scandals. He, too, had a wife whose success eventually eclipsed his, silent actress Blanche Sweet.

One sequence in both the 1937 and 1954 films was indeed inspired by John Barrymore's life. In 1937, Barrymore was in a sanitarium because of his drinking. Cukor visited him there to discuss his playing a role in Camille (he eventually cast Henry Daniell instead) and was struck by the place's failed attempt at homeyness. Rather than a hospital, it was just an old house that had gone to seed. When Barrymore took him into the sitting room, he asked one of the attendants, "Can we sit in here, Kelly? Nobody's going to come through and disturb us by pretending he's Napoleon." Cukor reported this scene to Selznick, who used it as the basis for the scene depicting Norman in the sanitarium.

In 1976, Barbra Streisand remade A Star Is Born, this time setting the story in the music business. She starred as rising singer Esther Hoffman, with Kris Kristofferson as her self-destructive mentor, John Norman Howard (a role turned down by Elvis Presley). The film received mixed reviews but scored a hit at the box office and brought Streisand and Paul Williams an Oscar® for Best Song for the picture's theme, "Evergreen."

For the past few years, there have been discussions of a new version of A Star Is Born, with rapper-turned-actor Will Smith in the Judy Garland role. The reversed-gender production would feature Smith as a rising star helped by a self-destructive diva.

by Frank Miller