The Star (1952) DVDRip (SiRiUs sHaRe)

The Star (1952)



Oscar-winning Movie queen Margaret Elliot's (Bette Davis) popularity and wealth have both gone bankrupt, Yet she is sure she can somehow jump-start her declining career. "One good picture is all I need," she says. She manages to get a screen test for a part in a film she always wanted to do. Offered to be tested for a supporting role in the film, she accepts, believing that if she plays the character woman as a sexy young girl she will be awarded the top role.



Bette Davis ... Margaret Elliot

Sterling Hayden ... Jim Johannson aka Barry Lester

Natalie Wood ... Gretchen

Warner Anderson ... Harry Stone

Minor Watson ... Joe Morrison

June Travis ... Phyllis Stone

Paul Frees ... Richard Stanley

Robert Warrick ... R.J., Aging Actor at Party

Barbara Lawrence ... Herself

Fay Baker ... Margaret's sister

Herb Vigran ... Roy



Director: Stuart Heisler



Runtime: 89 mins



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045186/
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Codecs:



Video : 615 MB, 952 Kbps, 23.976 fps, 608*448 (4:3), XVID = XVID Mpeg-4,

Audio : 81 MB, 125 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 1 channels, 0x55 = Lame MP3, CBR,



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During "The Star," Bette Davis commands the lead as Margaret Elliott, a Hollywood, Oscar-winning has been. The show is about handsome Jim Johannson (Sterling Hayden), a boat mechanic & fan of Elliott's, teaching her that there's more to life than being an actor. The adorable adolescent, Natalie Wood, plays Gretchen, Elliot's beloved daughter.



Elliot can't deal with the mid-life transition off the set & into retirement. She's so resentful she becomes a drunkard. During a classic scene, Davis uses one of her own Oscars, propped on the dashboard of Elliot's car & heads for the posh homes of the stars in Beverly Hills saying, "Come on, Oscar, let's you & me go get drunk!" Davis' portrayal of a fallen actor makes her seem older than she actually was. Of all the characters Davis embodied, I think she got Margaret Elliot spot-on! After she gives a faux sight-seeing tour of the stars' mansions to no one while drunk & driving, she lands in jail. That's when Jim bails her out, then takes her to his home on the ocean docks. The rest of the story is worth knowing.



Interestingly, this 1952 performance earned Davis her 9th Oscar nomination at 44yo. She was anything but washed up like the character she played, with 43 years of acting in movies & many more nominations & awards left to go. Davis was less than half-way into her acting career!



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I loved this movie! I campaigned 20th Century Fox to bring it out on video because my copy was on BETA and my Betamax has long since broke. What's interesting about this movie is that it was first offered to Joan Crawford who turned it down flat. At the same time, "Sudden Fear" was presented to Davis, who didn't like the script. Davis also turned down "Come Back, Little Sheba". Well, guess what? Davis accepted "The Star", Joan accepted "Sudden Fear" and Shirley Booth got the chance to repeat her stage success in "Sheba" and all three got nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 1952! Amazing.



Bette Davis did everything but hit the ceiling in "The Star". She was trying her best to give an Academy Award-type performance. And it was. Margaret to her agent: "You can do everything but get me a picture, can't you?! Harry Stone, the big star-maker, the gentleman agent, my friend!" That was one of the early great lines uttered by has-been movie queen, Margaret Elliot. There were many more to come. Davis turned in a realistic performance as the aging star and conveyed the frustrations that many older performers feel when they realize the truth about their failing careers.



For those who expect to see Margo Channing of "All About Eve", they won't see her here. Davis IS Margaret Elliot! When she said to the old women at the department store, "I AM Margaret Elliot, and I intend to STAY 'Margaret Elliot'!" she meant it.



I am crazy about the entire movie. The ending is contrived, but so what? This is what Davis herself described: A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED BETTE DAVIS MOVIE! Pop some corn, get a candy bar and a big soda and watch this on a very rainy day.



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This is Bette Davis in all her tempestuous, splendid fury and indignation. As Oscar-winning actress Margaret Elliot, she is now given the go by from her own studio in favor of younger Hollywood fillies like Barbara Lawrence who is thrown at the viewer like a new car off the assembly line.



Margaret Elliot is down to cases,bankrupt, with no prospects and is suffering the ignominy of seeing her former household possessions being sold on the auction block to satisfy her creditors,with rock bottom bids at that. Even her relatives are still putting the bite on her for monthly touches she can no longer provide, resulting in an explosive scene which only Miss Davis could deliver.



One of the most searing moments occurs when Margaret takes her "Oscar"(even more unsettling knowing that statuette is,indeed, one of Miss Davis's Best Actress awards) on a drunken odyssey through residential Hollywood. Behind the wheel,she grazes fenders, screams like a wounded banshee at motorists who happen to be driving on the same road as she is and lashes out verbally in front of the house where Barbara Lawrence resides. Her subsequent incarceration for DUI is as demoralizing as the clearly visible toilet inside the cell photographed in publicity stills.



'The Star' has a seedy look to it, which is desirable for this flick as we get a glimpse of Hollywood's underbelly during the early 1950's. One can almost imagine rows of palm trees rooted in used coffee cans with the scent of chicory mixed with cigarette butts. Even Miss Davis's wardrobe is downright frumpy, straight off the Woolworth's rack. Only when she does her screen test for an possible bit part in a movie does she try to project herself as a sexy tart with disastrous results.



The only jarring note to this movie is the appearance of Natalie Wood as Margaret Elliot's teenage daughter. She is bubbling with youthful enthusiasm, quite startling against this cynical, world weary backdrop. Sterling Hayden provides the obligatory beefcake and an ample shoulder for Margaret to cry on.



'The Star' radiates like the hood ornament on the Cadillac Margaret Elliot drives on approval before the studio dashes her dreams yet again and the repo man chases after yet another falling 'Star'.



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# In the scene where a drunken Margaret Elliot takes her Oscar for a ride in her car, Bette Davis used one of her own Oscars.



# Fox starlet Barbara Lawrence's presence is felt even though her actual screen time is brief. Besides her fleeting cameo appearance, she is referred to at least five other times as the young nemesis to Bette Davis' aging star. She is mentioned as an up-and-coming prospect by an agent, a drunken Davis drives by her house in a mock tour of stars' homes, her image appears in a drugstore ad that confronts Davis, Davis stops to stare at a huge portrait of Lawrence before entering her prospective producer's office, and she spitefully uses Lawrence's vacant dressing room to change alter her make-up before her screen test. For added Hollywood verisimilitude, references are made to other contemporaneous Fox stars including Victor Mature, Debra Paget, Mitzi Gaynor, and Jeanne Crain. Curiously there is a reference to an actor named Ralph Bellows, who's playing the rich, stuffy second lead. This is an obvious reference to the screen persona of Ralph Bellamy, who was not under contract to Fox at the time.