The Man That Got Away

I'll never finish my movie bucket list at the rate I'm going, but I checked off another one today.

Since I don't watch movies at home, I have to wait for the ones I want to see to show up in theaters, so it's not a terribly efficient process.

Life is not about efficiency, though.

But Movieland's Movies and Mimosas was showing the 1954 version of "A Star is Born" with Judy Garland and James Mason, so I had to go.

Having recently finished David O. Selznick's overblown bography (appropriately, a 700-page tome), I had read the laborious behind-the-scenes story of the 1937 version of this  movie being made so I was curious to see the remake.

It's l-o-n-g.

I knew that it had been cut for its original theatrical release to two and a half hours, but apparently that lost footage was restored in the 80s so it's back to a full three-hour spectacle with intermission.

And it is a spectacle, between all the scenes of shooting big Hollywood musicals and living the movie star life in 50s-era Tinsel Town.

I am fascinated by scenes of old-school night clubs, lamps glowing on each table, women in evening clothes, a live band or orchestra providing the entertainment and a sense of glamour that seems very long ago.

On the other hand, when Garland's character complains about being on tour with a band and having to wash her gloves in motel  sinks, I can appreciate the evolution of the expectations of women.

Because the story is a romance, there were many touching moments, perhaps the sweetest being when she performs for him, singing, dancing and clowning, in their living room.

She is trying to make him laugh (and succeeds), easily one of the most romantic things a person can do to another.

But for sheer grand gesture, when he takes her lipstick from her hand when they first meet and uses it to draw a heart with their initials in it on the wall, both Garland and I were smitten.

Granted, it did use up the better part of a good lipstick.

Still, I'm a sucker for seeing things in writing.

Even when it's only in a movie.