A Star Is Born (1937) on Netflix
Farm girl Esther Blodgett comes to Hollywood to become an actress. At a concert she meets Norman Maine, the fading star she idolizes. He arranges a screen test for her.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Esther Blodgett is a farm girl who wants to be a Hollywood actress. Her father and aunt discourage her, but her grandmother gives her savings so she can go. In Hollywood she signs up with Central Casting, only to find the office has stopped taking applications. She befriends Danny McGuire, an assistant director who is also out of work. At a concert celebrating Danny's new job, Esther meets Norman Maine, the actor she admires. Norman has long been a top star, though his drinking has hurt his career. Danny finds Esther a single night's waitressing work at a Hollywood party. There she catches Norman's eye. He asks his friend and producer Oliver Niles for a screen test for her. Impressed, Oliver offers her a contract and the new name Vicki Lester. Esther begins practicing lines for her first small role.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Star Is Born (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Janet Gaynor, who won the first Best Actress Oscar in 1929, holds her own Academy Award in the scene where her character wins one, and the same statuette later appears on a shelf in the film.
SPOILER
Some film historians believe the marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay was the film's real-life inspiration, and actor John Bowers has been identified as the model for Norman Maine, whose suicide-by-drowning echoes Bowers's own death in November 1936.SPOILER
Early in their careers, Budd Schulberg, then a script reader for David O. Selznick, and Ring Lardner Jr., then in Selznick's publicity department, were assigned to write extra dialogue, and their collaboration produced Janet Gaynor's final line: "This is Mrs. Norman Maine."- Four years after What Price Hollywood?, David O. Selznick asked George Cukor to direct A Star Is Born; Cukor declined because he felt the plot was too similar, and RKO executives considered a plagiarism suit over the similarities but chose not to sue.
- Cues from Max Steiner's score were jettisoned at the behest of producer David O. Selznick; in October 2025 the Brigham Young University Film Music Archive released a CD of the original 1937 soundtrack, drawn from Steiner's personal acetate discs.
- At the 10th Academy Awards, A Star Is Born became the very first color film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
