I’ve been watching the restored version of the 1954 remake of A Star Is Born. It’s worth watching, if only for Judy Garland’s great performances of “The Man That Got Away” and “Born In a Trunk”, a song that, perhaps, has a special resonance for me since my mother was, indeed, born while her parents were on the road although not in Pocatello, Idaho.
I have reservations about the movie overall and not the least of the reasons for it is James Mason. I think that James Mason is a fine actor but I don’t think he makes a convincing Norman Main. He’s just too cold, too distancing. Not nearly as good as Fredric March in the 1937 version of the movie, when he costarred with Janet Gaynor.
That led me to start thinking, who would have been a better Norman Main? Here’s one pick: Errol Flynn. Not usually thought of as a dramatic actor but I think he might have been up to it, not the least for his long association with John Barrymore.
Sounds doable, acting skill in swashbucklers are underrated as is the skill of an alcoholic to show a presentable face to the world.
Spencer Tracy received an Academy Award nomination for a role he played while dying of alcoholism. The films that Flynn made late in his career with Warners in 1950 were among his best-acted and were all highly popular.