A Star Is Born [1954 Soundtrack]

The 1954 remake of A Star Is Born, starring Judy Garland, marked a major cinematic comeback for the actress, her first film since being dropped by MGM in 1950 and a major box-office hit that earned her an Academy Award nomination. The soundtrack album, which, in this, its initial release, consisted solely of Garland vocal performances (two of them, "Here's What I'm Here For" and "Lose That Long Face," cut from the film shortly after it opened), marked another kind of comeback for her. As with her film career, this was her first recording since 1950's Summer Stock soundtrack to achieve commercial success; it peaked at number four on Billboard's LP chart and never went out of print over the next 50 years, with an expanded version released in 1988 and an even longer one in 2004. In this original version, it consists of seven tracks, six of them written by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. Five of those are good tunes, but one, the Oscar-nominated torch song "The Man That Got Away," became a standard and a signature song for Garland. The other highlight of the album is the 15-minute "Born in a Trunk" medley, a virtual musical autobiography that seems to refer as much to Garland herself as to the character she plays in the movie. Leonard Gershe and an uncredited Roger Edens (Garland's longtime associate who had written much special material for her in the past and could not be named because he was still under contract at MGM) assembled it and wrote connective material, resulting in a tour de force. In its 1954 version (which was the standard one until 1988), the album is basically a Judy Garland album, and a classic one at that. [Some variations among the releases are worth noting. Columbia BL-1201 is a deluxe boxed edition containing a booklet. Columbia BA-1201, a set of three 45 rpm EPs, splits the lengthy "Born in a Trunk" medley into two parts; necessarily, it is also broken up on Columbia BM-1201, an album of 78 rpm discs. Most of the releases are in monophonic sound, but several of the later ones, including Columbia CS-8740, Harmony HS-11366, and Columbia LE-10011, are in "enhanced" (read: phony) stereo. The recordings would not appear in true stereo until the 1988 reissue.]