There have been good performances—even great performances—that Oscar has overlooked in the past decades, but there has never been a slight as painful as what happened on March 30, 1955.
Judy Garland returned to the screen in George Cukor’s musical masterpiece A Star Is Born, and her performance elicited the kind of praise that happens once in a lifetime. Judy Garland did not win the 1954 Best Actress Academy Award. Grace Kelly took home the gold for The Country Girl, and Judy Garland’s film career returned to limbo.
The other three nominees that year didn’t stand a chance.
Audrey Hepburn – Sabrina
Jane Wyman – Magnificent Obsession
Dorothy Dandridge – Carmen Jones
Judy Garland was probably the most talented performer in Hollywood history. She was totally unique. She had a great voice, was equally at home in comedy and drama and was incredibly attractive. Garland became a star in 1939 playing Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz, and for the next decade she was one of MGM’s top stars. Her 1944 masterpiece
Meet Me In St. Louis is one of the few perfect films. It was also a smash hit commercially.
The following year, 1945, Garland introduced the best song of 1946 (“On the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe”) in The Harvey Girls. Easter Parade and The Pirate confirmed she had no peer in musical comedy. Her dramatic non-singing role in The Clock also showed her exceptional range as an actress. But Judy’s story—drugs, breakdowns, suicide attempts, etc.—has been documented many times. When she was finally fired by MGM in 1949 during the filming of Annie Get Your Gun, it looked like Garland was washed up. Her two marriages—briefly to David Rose and then Vincente Minnelli—also ended. (At least Liza was the great dividend of that union!) Judy Garland was only 28 years old.
But by late 1953 things were looking up for Judy Garland. A new husband (Sid Luft), another daughter (Lorna) and a great film project planned to restore her Hollywood luster. Jack Warner gave her the plum role of Vicki Lester in the musical remake of
A Star is Born.
The 1937 version was an Oscar-winner starring Janet Gaynor and Frederick March. The new version had it all—George Cukor as director, James Mason as co-star and one of the great scores in history by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. The filming got off to a great start, but several weeks in, Warner decided the film should be in Cinemascope, so everyone had to start over. Judy’s weight and behavior fluctuated wildly during the filming. Sometimes she would show up; other times she was unable to function.
A whole new “Born in a Trunk” sequence was added after Cukor finished his version. Finally, the $6 million, almost-three-hour film premiered at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood in September, 1954. Every star on the planet was there, and they came out gushing about the brilliant film and its star Judy Garland.
The reviews were beyond raves. Time called it “Just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history.” Everything about the film was extraordinary. James Mason (also Oscar-nominated) was brilliant. Jack Carson and Charles Bickford were outstanding, and George Cukor’s direction was inspired. And Judy—well, she was incredible. From the fantastic “The Man That Got Away” (the torch song to end all torch songs) to the comic musical numbers and then the devastating dressing room breakdown scene, Judy Garland was everything her most fanatical fans prayed for. But then Jack Warner made probably the worst artistic decision of his career.
Feeling he could make more money if the film played more times during a day, he cut almost 30 minutes out of the film,** including several of the great musical numbers. But he left in “Born in a Trunk,” which should have been cut. The audience knows that Garland is a great star after “The Man That Got Away”—we do not need further proof. Plus, Jack Warner was so fed up with Garland and Sid Luft he did not take out one single promotional ad for the film. Warner, who at the premiere stated “It’s the greatest night in the history of the movies,” destroyed not only the film but any chance that Judy Garland would resurrect her film career.
Grace Kelly had no such problems in 1954. Her quick rise to fame in supporting roles (
High Noon/
Mogambo) led to her smash hit year 1954. She became Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite muse in
Dial M For Murder and
Rear Window, and she snagged the plum dramatic role of the year—Georgie Elgin in
The Country Girl. There was only one problem. She was 20 years too young for the role, and much too beautiful.
In her defense, Kelly was very good in the film, but putting an old cardigan and dowdy glasses on her did not remotely make her look like the beaten down wife of an alcoholic. Her co-stars Bing Crosy (also nominated) and William Holden were far superior. They were the right ages, and their performances were outstanding. So going into the Oscar race, Grace Kelly was an MGM star in a Paramount film who had both studios behind her, and she was the golden girl of the moment.
The other three ladies had their moments.
Dorothy Dandridge made history by being the first African-American woman to get a Best Actress nomination. Dandridge was good in the film, but her singing was dubbed and her nomination was considered enough of a reward.
Jane Wyman had already won an Oscar for keeping her mouth shut in
Johnny Belinda. 1949 was some year for Wyman—she got rid of husband Ronald Reagan and won an Academy Award!
Magnificent Obsession was early Douglas Sirk and more famous for making Rock Hudson a star.
Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Sabrina, but she had won the previous year for Roman Holiday, and while she was charming in Sabrina, did moviegoers really want or believe that she would end up with Humphrey Bogart at the end of the film? He looked like her grandfather, and why did Cary Grant turn down this role?
Oscar night 1955 found Judy Garland in the hospital. She had just given birth to her last child. Cameras were set outside her window for the big moment. But that moment was stolen by Grace Kelly, who swept onstage in a gorgeous gown to claim the prize. Grace Kelly, too, would be gone forever in another year. She made her last film, High Society, and then married Prince Rainier of Monaco in the wedding of the century. From all reports, giving up Hollywood for a crown was pretty devastating. She had three children—and spoiled them completely—was not allowed to return to the screen in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, and then died in a freak car accident in 1982.
When anyone asks what is the biggest mistake in Academy history, there is only one answer: Judy Garland not winning for A Star Is Born. Groucho Marx put it best when he sent Judy Garland a telegram saying, “Dear Judy, this is the biggest robbery since Brink’s.”
**In 1983, the restored A Star Is Born premiered with cut musical numbers and some of the footage restored thanks to the late Ron Haver, who scoured the Warner Brothers vaults. You see, Jack Warner cut the original negative of the film and not one original print was saved! (There have always been rumors of rich, gay film fanatics with stolen complete prints.) Ron Haver’s book on the film and its restoration is a brilliant study of all things A Star Is Born.
Coming next: 1972—Liza vs. Diana—Two Ladies Sing the Blues
