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© 2002 by Sandy McLendon
If you love Modernism, and if you love movies, it's one of your very favorite movie houses ever- the Malibu beach house of Vicki Lester and Norman Maine in 1954's A Star Is Born.
The story of this house reveals that things in Hollywood are not always what they seem, and that there's always more going on in a movie than the average member of the audience ever suspects. The story begins much earlier than 1953, when ASIB, as it was known to its cast and crew, was filmed. Parts of the history behind the house go back to 1937, and parts even hark back to the silent era.
The ultimate image from A Star Is Born: Judy Garland's "big fat close-up" against the background of the Malibu beach house set.
photo credit: Warner Bros.
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In 1937, the first version of A Star Is Born opened to tremendous critical and box-office response. The tale is about Vicki Lester, a nobody who becomes a star with the help of an alcoholic movie actor, Norman Maine. The two fall in love, and marry, but Maine's problems begin to affect Vicki's career. In a moment of self-sacrifice, Norman Maine walks into the Pacific, drowning himself, so that he can harm Vicki no more. It should have been a downer, but the first ASIB compensated for the unhappier aspects of its story with a secret weapon: sensationally attractive décors in a Hollywood Moderne style, designed by Lyle Wheeler and Edwin Boyle. If you hated the story, you got your money's worth on eye candy.
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Secret Weapon: In the movie's first version, Norman Maine was shown drunk in bed. The unpleasant situation was glossed over by the Hollywood Moderne set.
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In planning the 1954 remake, it quickly became apparent that this tactic needed not only to be repeated, but expanded upon; screenwriter Moss Hart was taking the story to a new, darker, more cynical level than ever. The first ASIB had purported to give audiences an inside view of Tinseltown without doing anything more than living up to moviegoers' fantasies of Hollywood. This new version had fangs, and they laid Hollywood bare. The audience was shown exactly how ugly the studio contract system could be for stars and actors. The casting couch issue was explored, albeit humorously, in a musical number. Before meeting Vicki, Norman Maine was shown living with a preening, pawky starlet not his wife, and using the famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub as a meat rack, cruising for more starlets. The nasty side of publicity-seeking and making got a full airing. For 1954, ASIB went as far as an American movie could go, and perhaps a little farther.
Judy's "big fat close-up" pose was cloned to become the major advertising image for "A Star Is Born"photo credit: Warner Bros.
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Since the physical attractiveness of the picture was considered so key to its box-office potential, Warner Bros.' head Jack L. Warner and producer Sid Luft- who happened to be the husband of ASIB star Judy Garland- assembled a team capable of giving the story a lush, luxurious look. Gene Allen was tapped to design the sets, George James Hopkins to do the set decoration, and George Hoyningen-Huene to consult on color. The story would be photographed in Technicolor ® to give it greater beauty, with CinemaScope ® used to give an impressive, "big" look to the proceedings. CinemaScope was deemed so vital to ASIB, it was chosen over Warner Bros.' own WarnerScope widescreen process.
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The stumbling block to making ASIB look good was that it was a "backstage" story, with much of its action taking place in dives, rooming houses, jails, sanitariums, and soundstages. These unattractive locations were balanced by scenes that took place at the Shrine Auditorium, the fictional Oliver Niles Studio (actually Warner Bros.' own lot), and an Academy Awards ® ceremony where Vicki's Oscar ® acceptance speech is disrupted by Norman. To include even more visual beauty in the movie, it was decided to take full advantage of part of its plot: Norman and Vicki build themselves a new house when they get married.
Fortunately, the Malibu location specified in the story was already known to audiences as a scenic, desirable place to live, and the house could be showcased in a production number planned for the movie. Titled "Someone At Last", it was the last section of the movie that could be considered lighthearted; the story careened into its darkest territory after the number ended.
Set designer Gene Allen took his cues on building the house from several sources. There was his own familiarity with how movie stars lived. He had seen the Case Study Houses being built in Los Angeles. And he knew just how far he could go with lavishness, because he worked for Jack L. Warner.
Warner had one of the finest estates in Hollywood- nine acres landscaped by Florence Yoch, who had landscaped Tara for Gone With the Wind. The house itself could only be called magnificent; it had been decorated by the most expensive interior designer in Hollywood, Billy Haines. Done in an eclectic mixture of Georgian, Chinese, and Billy Haines-designed moderne, the décor was the most famous in town. Gene Allen appropriated several Haines "touches" for his set design; the borrowings were necessary because using Haines himself was out of the question.
The first reason was that Billy Haines was considered pricey even by the standards of a town where money flowed like water. The second was that Haines had had a taste of working in the movies, and wasn't interested in going back to them. He'd been an M-G-M star back in the silent era, becoming very popular and doing excellent work, notably in 1928's Show People, with Marion Davies. His performing career ended over his personal life: Haines was gay, and he didn't care who knew it. M-G-M head Louis B. Mayer did care, and dumped Haines at the first slump in his box-office popularity. Unfazed, Haines drew on his established talent as a decorator- his own house was the most beautiful in town- and built a whole new career. Gene Allen emulated the chinoiserie Haines had sold Warner, as well as the mogul's private projection system, with a screen that rose from the floor, assisted by a water-powered pump. In addition to paying homage to Haines' work for Warner, Allen also may have been inspired by a house Haines had decorated for Fox mogul William Goetz and his wife Edie, who was, curiously enough in view of Haines' movie-career downfall, Louis B. Mayer's daughter. The Goetz residence had glowing light-grey walls, modern furniture, and a collection of Modern and Impressionist art so extravagant it encompassed Picassos and Renoirs.
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Following standard movie-making practice of the time, the Malibu house Allen designed was built mainly as an interior set; only a small portion of the exterior was built. Matte painting (Click here for an explanation of this process) superimposed a painted house on real Malibu footage for exterior shots. The major portion of the house seen onscreen was the living room, and for all its apparent Fifties Modern simplicity, it was one of the most complicated and expensive sets in ASIB to design, furnish, and decorate. The problem was that it served as the setting for "Someone At Last"; in that song, Judy Garland performed a delicious spoof of all the M-G-M musical numbers she was famous for, creating the fantasy that the room and its furnishings had become the ultimate Hollywood soundstage. Everything in the room had to support the premise, and serve the number's action.
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Judy Garland and James Mason are seen sitting on one of their two Dunbar sofas, designed by Edward Wormley.
photo credit: Warner Bros.
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Allen gave the house a Fifties Modern look loosely based on the Case Study Houses, but "warmed up" for mass-audience consumption with pickled oak paneling and details. Set decorator George James Hopkins was responsible for choosing the furniture and accessories for the living room, and his sensitivity to the needs of the movie resulted in what may be the best work of Hopkins' long career. He began with two Edward Wormley sofas by Dunbar, one brown, one gold. He also turned to Dunbar for a Wormley game table and chairs that were very reminiscent of Billy Haines' famous furniture designs. His lighting choices included an Arteluce three-arm adjustable pole lamp designed by Gino Sarfatti in 1950, and the latest fad of the early 50's in the game room- a Gotham Lighting pull-down fixture. A Paul Frankl table for Johnson Furniture was in the living room, as was a most curious pair of Barcelona chairs with ottomans. The chairs appear to be the Knoll version, but the ottomans are clearly copies, perhaps to lighten the weight Judy Garland would have to handle as she moved them during the sequence. In addition, the chairs are obviously re-upholstered; the cushions are not as well detailed as original Knoll cushions would have been, appearing somewhat overstuffed. This was probably due to Hopkins' choice of white for their color. The furnishings were complimented by Impressionist and Modern art that included a real Maurice de Vlaminck painting, and by some Chinese pieces that included a lamp and a T'ang Dynasty camel sculpture. To complete the set, Hopkins found many small accessories that looked perfectly appropriate and innocuous, but which would become props for Judy Garland's send-up of M-G-M musical production numbers.
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And how well it all worked! "Someone At Last" began with Garland calling "Lights! Camera! Action!" as she swiveled the Arteluce lamp's arms into position for lights, rolled her tea cart into the shot to serve as a "camera", and swung into the action of the number. As the music played on a Fifties hi-fi system built into a chinoiserie cabinet, and the CinemaScope cameras played lovingly over the expansive set, Garland lip-synched, and simulated everything found in a Hollywood production number with what was to be found in the living room. One of the Barcelona ottomans was stripped of its cushion so that its straps could be played as a harp ("there's always a harp in a dream sequence!"), and the Dunbar table and chairs became the Eiffel Tower for a lampoon of Edith Piaf. Garland plucked two leaves from a philodendron in a bullet planter to use them as a stripper costume, holding them to her bosom and then dropping them in a merciless send-up of every bored blasé strip-tease "artiste" who ever was. Since 1954 was not a politically correct era, the number included Judy as a Chinese girl in a coolie hat improvised from- of course- the coolie lampshade from her Chinese lamp. The room's tiger-skin rug became a tiger costume for Garland in an African-inspired moment. Even the sofa pillows got into the act: Judy used a striped bolster as a concertina and a ruffled pink pillow as a can-can skirt. A pair of salt and pepper mills on the tea cart became maracas for the "Brazilian" part of the song. At the end of the sequence, Garland and Mason barricaded themselves into a fort devised from the Wormley sofas and shot it out with imaginary bad guys in a Wild West bit. The most inspired moment may have been when James Mason manipulated the controls of the room's private movie projection system, making its screen rise from the floor and its projector run without film. Garland cavorted in front of the screen; the flickering, strobing beam from the projector made her look as if she was performing in a silent movie. |
Gino Sarfatti's 1950 "Matrix" lamp for Arteluce was chosen for "A Star Is Born's" set.
Arteluce Historical Photo
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The exteriors of the beach house were a set, just like the interiors, but they look absolutely real, thanks to movie magic. The trick employed to recreate Malibu on a soundstage was one of the most sophisticated in classic-era Hollywood's repertoire. A huge rear-projection movie screen was erected across the stage from the set, which was of the exterior decks and sliding glass doors of the house. Footage of waves breaking on a beach was projected on the screen; the glass doors picked up the reflection of the image as it played. The effects people used fans to create a little wind that ruffled the actors' hair and costumes, and the illusion was complete. This effect is so complicated to produce properly, it's seldom used today; the shutters of the camera and the projector employed must be synchronized exactly to avoid "flickering" of the projected background. Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo offers one of the few other examples of this projected reflection technique, in a scene where James Stewart and Barbara Bel Geddes leave a bookstore.
Movie magic made the set of the beach house's exterior look real. The image from the rear-projection screen (right) was picked up by the glass doors of the set (left). A fan created an artificial breeze, making the scene come alive.image credit: Sandy McLendon
As great as it looked onscreen, the Malibu house met the usual fate of Hollywood sets; it was demolished as soon as shooting was completed, to clear the stage for other movies. It had a curious afterlife based in Judy Garland's private life and the business practices of Hollywood in the Fifties. A Star Is Born was billed and released as a Warner Bros. movie, but was actually an independent production financed by Warners and made by Transcona Enterprises, an independent company Sid Luft had set up just for the purpose of making Judy Garland movies for the studio. This arrangement meant that everything used in the picture was bought or rented in Transcona's name, not Warners'. When ASIB was completed, Transcona was left with a lot of property that had been purchased for the movie, and that had to be disposed of. As was usual practice, many of ASIB's assets were sold to Warner Bros. for use in other movies, at a fraction of their wholesale cost new- but not the furniture George James Hopkins had so carefully selected.
Despite appearances, ASIB's star and producer were not wealthy- Judy's career had consisted mainly of concert tours for the previous four years, not movies. Money was tight; she and Sid Luft lived in a Tudor mansion on Mapleton Drive that looked impressive, but was actually largely unfurnished. Luft saw an opportunity to decorate the house with ASIB's leavings, due to something in his producer's contract called a salvage clause.
The salvage clause basically gave Sid Luft, as ASIB's producer, the right to first refusal on purchasing anything sold after the movie was completed. Most of it he didn't want, and signed back over to Warner Bros., who'd financed it in the first place. But the furniture was a different story; the Lufts needed the stuff. Luft exercised his rights under the contract, and bought all the Malibu house furniture for $4,200. The beautiful furnishings were trucked to Mapleton Drive, where they served the Luft family for over a decade, finally being auctioned off by Sid Luft years after Judy Garland's untimely death in 1969.
One of the least-known aspects of Hollywood, producers' salvage clauses were the secret reason so much modernism was seen in the independently-produced movies that came into being after World War II. Like Sid Luft, many a producer ordered up the latest and the greatest for his movie- and took it home for next to nothing after shooting was done.
The house in ASIB still stands in the place it counts- in memory. Nearly fifty years after its last wall was torn down, moviegoers all over the world still love it for the beauty it achieved, and the charm it had when Judy Garland turned it into an imaginary movie studio, to cheer her up husband- and us. Whenever I see A Star Is Born, I can't resist the temptation to daydream of recreating the house in reality, of owning its luxurious furnishings, and coming home to it to be with someone I love.
And if that someone was ever down in the dumps, I'd have the record of "Someone At Last" around somewhere, ready to go, ready to dance to, ready to spread cheer.
"Lights! Camera! Action!"
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Thanks to jetsetmodern.com's publisher:
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For furniture identifications, special thanks to:
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A Star Is Modern: The Malibu Beach House in A Star is Born
SOURCES
· A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and its 1983 Restoration, by Ronald Haver (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)
· Judy, by Gerold Frank (New York, Harper & Row, 1975)
· Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend, by David Shipman (New York, Hyperion, 1993)
· David O. Selznick's Hollywood, by Ronald Haver (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1983)
· George Cukor: A Double Life, by Patrick McGilligan (New York, HarperPerennial, 1992)
· Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star, by William J. Mann (New York, Penguin Books, 1998)
· Architectural Digest, Vol. 45, No. 4, April 1992. Jack Warner: The Beverly Hills Estate of the Archetypal Hollywood Mogul, by Charles Lockwood, pp. 134-141, p. 256. Also William Goetz: Prolific Producer's Holmby Hills Collection, by A. Scott Berg, pp. 222-225, p. 284.
TRADEMARK / COPYRIGHT NOTICES
· Warner Bros. ® is a trademark of Warner Bros., Inc., and AOL Time Warner.
· Technicolor ® is a trademark of Technicolor, Inc. and Thomson Multimedia.
· CinemaScope ® is a trademark of 20th Century-Fox, Inc.
· Academy Award ® and Oscar ® are trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, © A.M.P.A.S.®
· The masthead image is based on the original opening credits of the motion picture "A Star Is Born", © 1954, renewed, Warner Bros., Inc. and AOL Time Warner.
· The song "Someone At Last", by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, from the motion picture "A Star Is Born", © 1954, renewed, Harwin Music Co. Published by MPL Communications, Inc. ASCAP.
This article has not been authorized by any of the persons or corporate entities mentioned in its text. All information and conclusions contained herein are the sole responsibility of the author.
VHS and DVD
The motion picture A Star Is Born is available on VHS cassette and DVD from Warner Home Video.
The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack recording of A Star Is Born is available on CD from Columbia/Sony.
A Star Is Born : The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration
The book, A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and its 1983 Restoration, by Ronald Haver,
will be available new in April 2002 from Amazon. Reprinted by Applause Theatre Book Publishers.
Purchase all these great A Star Is Born items at Amazon. Click the product images above to purchase these items.
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This article was originally published on March 2, 2002. All Rights Reserved. Copyright (c) 2002 D.A. "Sandy" McLendon
and Joe Kunkel, Jetset - Designs for Modern Living. All Rights Reserved.
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