Name: $5 million tragedy: Why Warner Bros. destroyed A Star Is Born
Uploaded: 2026-01-16T16:08:32.254Z
Duration: 5 min 51 s
Description: One of the wildest stories about the making of a Hollywood film ever.

One of the wildest stories about the making of a Hollywood film ever.

Hollywood

The 1954 film 'A Star Is Born,' starring Judy Garland, underwent a tumultuous production marked by frequent studio changes and high costs, ultimately becoming Warner Brothers' most expensive film at the time. Despite critical acclaim at its premiere, the studio cut 27 minutes—including two musical numbers—without the director's input to allow for more daily screenings, resulting in lost footage and a diminished box office return.

Decades later, efforts to restore the original version were hampered by the destruction of the film's negatives, leaving seven minutes permanently lost. While some missing scenes were recreated using production stills, the film remains incomplete, prompting ongoing debate about whether AI should be used for restoration or if the film's incompleteness should stand as a testament to the importance of preservation.

$5 million tragedy: Why Warner Bros. destroyed 'A Star Is Born'

This is one of the wildest stories about the making of a Hollywood film ever, and many of you have probably never heard it before. In 1984, film librarian Merle Ray Harlan was charged with stealing 419 films. One scrap found in his vast collection was a missing scene from the 1954 film A Star Is Born, starring Judy Garland. So many stolen films that could have been lost to history, and so many more we don't even know are lost. Unfortunately, that loss still includes seven minutes of A Star Is Born. If you try to watch the entire originally screened cut of A Star Is Born now, it's a pretty odd experience. About 41 minutes into the film, it briefly ceases to be a motion picture, instead suddenly consisting of still images like some avant-garde thing your Brooklyn boyfriend would drag you to see. In his usual wonderful shape, huh? He'll sleep it off on the plane. It's odd. You see, only four missing minutes from A Star Is Born were recovered from Merle Harlan. There are still seven minutes of the full cut of the movie that are presumably lost to time, resulting in a somewhat incomplete film. So, who stole those last seven minutes? Well, the people who steal everything beautiful from us, my darling. Capitalists. Back in the 50s, Hollywood was feeling a bit nervous about the growing popularity of television, so they were getting a little gimmicky. Originally, A Star Is Born was going to be a 3D movie. Then, it was decided it would be shot in something called Warner Super Scope to compete with the new hotness Cinemascope. Then, it was decided a week into filming that, no, actually, let's just shoot it in Cinemascope because people like Cinemascope and that'll make us more money. Between the studio constantly changing its mind about how to shoot the movie and Judy Garland's erratic behavior that might have been due to her struggles with addiction, the movie sounds like it was hell to make. It blew past its production schedule, needed extensive reshoots, and ultimately cost over $5 million to produce. Warner Brothers' most expensive film to date. But after all the drama, A Star Is Born was screened for critics and audiences in New York and LA and received rave reviews. Judy's performance was incredible. George Cukor's directing was sharp and evocative. The songs by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin could be instant classics. All that work was apparently worth it, resulting in a three-hour-long masterpiece. The issue? Movie theaters didn't want a three-hour-long anything, even if it was a masterpiece or whatever you nerds are calling it. In order to recoup the enormous costs of production, Warner Brothers wanted the movie to run multiple times a day, and a three-hour movie limited the number of showings. Without input from director George Cukor, Jack Warner, one of the bros, sliced 27 minutes out of the movie, including two musical numbers. The final product went to wide release, and audiences weren't thrilled. It barely earned back its budget, and while the film was nominated for six Oscars, it received none. A sad end to a sad story. Until... Fast forward nearly 30 years. The Oscars are doing a retrospective for Ira Gershwin, and they include one of his numbers from A Star is Born. People are suddenly interested in the movie again, and want to see the original version. But there's a big problem. When Jack Warner sliced it up, the studio destroyed the original negatives. So in 1981, film historian Ronald Haver got the blessing of Academy President Faye Kanan, who convinced the board chairman for Warner Brothers to let Ronald dig through the Warner vaults to see if, even by accident, some of the scrap scenes survived. He was able to find alternate takes of the two missing numbers, as well as a few other moments. But there were entire scenes with shots missing that were simply impossible to recover. Rather than give up on the project, Ronald and Faye decided to use production stills to patchwork over the missing bits. Better than nothing. But as mentioned, it still feels off. It's still a beloved rumination on Hollywood, a vision of Judy Garland at her finest, but we'll never see what the movie could have, what it should have, looked like. So here's a question for you that might feel a little out of the blue. Is this a good use case for AI? Full disclosure, I myself am opposed on moral grounds to the use of AI in cinema and, frankly, everywhere. It's resource-hungry. It is an additive to the creative process, considering it is incapable of generating genuinely new ideas. But with that in mind, would it be acceptable to use AI here, in this circumstance, to try to get us closer to the original vision of the filmmakers? In honor of its director and star, who did their damnedest to make something unique and beautiful, and were sabotaged by studio meddling. Well, I'm still gonna say no. And the reason is that the movie is incomplete, yes, but its incompleteness is now part of its story. As Faye Kanan put it in a 1983 New York Times piece about the restoration, this will dramatize better than anything else what a violation those cuts really made. We sort of take it for granted that someone, somewhere, is preserving all of these movies. But a study done in 2013 by the Library of Congress revealed that only 14% of silent films produced in America from 1912 to 1929 still exist in their entirety. There are thousands of movies we'll never see, because at the time, no one thought to preserve them, or couldn't afford to, or could afford to, but thought it was a waste of money. If not for folks like Ronald Haver, who care so deeply about cinema that they work long hours in an attempt to preserve it, there would be large swaths of our history that would be lost to time. If we tried to paper over this with AI, we would be denying that real people screwed up for a little extra money, and that real people tried to fix it through passion and perseverance. This movie, as originally screened, was about the madness of a Hollywood machine. And now, in its current form, it's even more so about that, by its ability to illustrate what happens if we don't take pains to preserve this art form. Thank you very much for watching. If you have any comments, please leave them below. And don't forget to like and subscribe.

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