The Star (1952): A Review

THE STAR (1952)

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Bette Davis. 

We had the "comeback" of a silent film star in Sunset Boulevard. Now it is the sound era's first generation of film actresses longing for a return with The Star. Earning the penultimate Oscar nomination of her career, The Star is a respectable Bette Davis vehicle.

Film legend Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) has an Oscar to her name, but that is really about all she has to her name. Margaret has fallen on hard times. Her agent cannot get her work, she has endured the humiliation of a public auction of her belongings and faces eviction from her small apartment. She also had to essentially farm out her daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood) to her ex-husband, who has a happy second marriage and more successful career. The final indignity is when her sister and brother-in-law come asking for a monthly allowance, uninterested that she is broke.

Despondent, Margaret takes her Oscar and says, "Come on, Oscar. Let's you and me get drunk!". An arrest for DUI yields an unexpected source of help: Jim Johansen (Sterling Hayden), a former costar who left the industry and is now happy as the owner of a boatyard. He encourages her to start a new career as a saleswoman, but that ends in disaster when she's recognized and mocked. The DUI arrest, ironically enough, gets her publicity, which in turn gets her a chance to be in The Fatal Winter, a role she has coveted for years.

Therein lies the problem. She had optioned The Fatal Winter years ago when she was an ingenue, but now she is offered a screen test for the older sister. Determined to get a part she is far too young for, she vamps up her screen test. Watching it later, she realizes her disastrous mistake. Is it too late for her to make a comeback? Will she realize that a post-career life with Jim and Gretchen is better than trying to keep being The Star? 

Bette Davis was 44 when she made The Star, and I think that reveals how difficult it was for older actresses to have roles that were not positive portrayals of older women. Her prior Oscar nomination for All About Eve touched on a similar theme of actresses of a certain age needing to move past their glory days to more domestic matters. I do not know if it was a reflection of 1950's America, but there it is.

The Star has a standout performance by Davis as Margaret Elliot. She is strong whenever she has to endure some kind of humiliation due to her faded career. The quiet expressions of either sadness or rage whenever her status is brought up works. Davis even manages to be funny in some of her line delivery of Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert's screenplay. One cannot help but smile when she looks at her Oscar and tells him to join her on going on a bender. Later, she goes off on two old women who look horrified when Elliot throws lingerie at them for pushing her on whether she was Margaret Elliot.

"Call the manager! Call the President! Call the fire department!" Elliot bellows when one of them says she will call the manager on her. I don't know how Margaret went from "the President" to "the fire department", but I found it funny. I also found it true-to-life, this stream-of-consciousness that led from one group to another.  She is effective, if perhaps slightly mannered, when working with Wood as her daughter. The efforts to push these devoted mother scenes was a bit forced in my view. 

Davis' best moments are when she is auditioning for The Fatal Winter. In her efforts at the screen test to be coquettish when the role is meant to be frumpy, we see an actress (Davis) fully aware that her actress character (Margaret) is not fully aware of how ridiculous and contradictory she is. When she sees the footage, the genuine horror and realization of her grave error comes through. Margaret Elliot is not so much self-destructive as she is self-sabotaging. 

Wood, in a smaller role, was strong as Gretchen, the devoted daughter who loved Margaret through thick and thin. I did feel for Wood on a personal level, however, when she has to have a scene while sailing, aware of her great terror of water. Hayden did well as Jim, Margaret's rescuer. I did find their love scenes stretched believability, but not to where they were ludicrous. 

We had a great score from Victor Young, who always brought excellent music to whatever film he worked on. 

The Star is entertaining and keeps your attention. The ending may be a bit pat and perhaps not the most original or affirming (no comebacks for Margaret or acceptance of time going by). On the whole, however, The Star is worth looking up. 

DECISION: B-